Your kitties and their toys

Do your kitties play with their toys?

We have all these little toys for Socks and Mittens but they hardly look at them. I've bought catnip mouses, balls, furry things, all kinds of stuff and it just lays there being ignored.

I have a feather on a stick that I have to move around under a newspaper and they will play with that. I also got one of those lazer pens and they love to chase that around now and then.

They only want to play when I interract with them. I wish they would play alone sometimes.

Does your kitties play alone with their toys?

 

mine don't play on their own very often. Now and then Missy (11 years old in July) will have a burst of energy and run around chasing things...but mostly just running around.

 

Sometimes mine will play with balls or toys with bells in them on their own, but usually only for a day or two after purchasing the toy. I do have a "fish" on a "fishing pole" with a bell and my kitty loves when I play with her with that. I leave it wedged into the armrest of the couch so that it hangs down and sometimes she does play with it by herself.

For years I didn't buy cat toys because they rarely played with them. Empty bags and boxes were always a hit, though.

 

Lex and Raz play mostly with eachother.. course each has their own play times still.

Raz is still young so it's expected, tho sometimes it helps when you show him where a toy is.

Lex will bring you a mouse once and awhile expecting you to play with him or he'll go to the cat tower and sit on the top perch and pretend his tail is a snake and it must die. pretty impressive seeing him with his fat butt up there all twisting and stuff. hehe

i tend to rotate the cats toys tho. leave some out, then take them away and bring back the others. the old toys become new again

 

We have a little basket full of toys and Romeo & Ghost will dig through it until they find the one they want. Then they'll pull it out and play with it (just need to teach them to put their toys back when they're done playing :roll: ). Emily & Toonces don't really play much, but Emily does have a bag of catnip that she likes.

-Chelle

 

Ours prefer interaction as well. But they will play with catnip toys and mice on their own when I'm not watching them. :mrgreen:

 

That's part of the key - not watching them. :lol:

 

Vianne has her own toybox bursting with all kinds of toys. Her favorites are the little furry mice(which NEVER seem to get old), the little plastic balls with the bells inside for playing in the bathtub, and a deboned foxtail i got when i was in Wyoming. She plays with all of them on her own, but especially the furry catnip mice. she will bat them all over the house for hours or until she either gets exhausted to where she is laying there panting, or she loses them under the furniture. If im around reading, at the computer, watching TV, etc...she likes to play "fetch" with her mice. She will drop them at my feet or on my book over and over again and wait for me to throw it and cry if i dont, lol. I easily have bought her close to a couple hundred of these things since they are her favorite and she is constantly losing them or tearing them up and needing new ones. They are a regular purchase when i buy cat litter, hehe.

 

I wish my kitties would play fetch. I would love to play that with them. If I throw something they will 'maybe' chase after it but then it doesn't move so my kitties walk away.

 

Tennessee would play fetch for hours. She'd also catch things with her paws.

Most cats outgrow it, but I don't think she would have.

-Chelle

 

One year my sister brought her cats to my parents' house for Christmas. My parents had a big bowl of walnuts out and the kitties would love to bat them out of the bowl and then chase them around the house. About 10 years later, when my parents moved, they found more walnuts hidden under furniture.

 

Luna only plays with toys that I make move. Only rarely, when I can't play with her and she's feeling really feisty, she'll throw around one of her toy mice by herself. It's hilarious because she really throws the thing high and it crashes into everything in the room!

Is everyone here familiar with "da bird" (the toy)? Well, it comes with a really nice long wand with a string attached, and long after Luna got bored with the official attachment (feathery thing) I started experimenting with attaching different things to the end of the string via the connector. Her favorites are small balled up pieces of aluminum foil, raffia, pieces of paper, and any other intriguing little things that I can think of.

Lately, our big thing is finding a piece of my wife's hair (which happens to be over 4 feet long) on the floor and making it move like a snake on the carpet with my hand. You should see Luna pounce on it! Her tail gets all puffed up and everything, it's so cute.

Also, this one is a favorite. I get a regular bed sheet and fold it up a couple of times, and then let it drape over the edge of the couch. It makes a little "tunnel" type thing, and then Luna hides there while I make the wand toy land near the sheet. She comes flying out and pounces on the toy, and then goes back under the sheet to wait for the next one that lands.

I try to play with her 2 or 3 times a day for around 15-20 minutes each, and it seems to satisfy her hunting urge (she's indoor-only).

 

Gracie never understood what to do with the little fuzzy mice or the balls, you could roll them and toss all you wanted, and she just watched. She might sniff it. The little poles with stuff hanging off though...she LOVES those! I also have 2 Brazillian Opossums who love them, it's hilarious. Gracie isn't allowed near them since they are about the size of a hamster, but when I give it to her after having let them play with it she can't do anything but sniff it, lol!

 

Chloe did pre-Alex but since Alex came into her life she prefers to play with him. He on the other hand loves to play. The furry mice are his absolute favorite. We had 2 and I just got 2 more. Last night he kept putting one in the kitchen trash can. I fished it out 3 times and he kept putting it back in there :x

 

lunaguy - I'm going to have to try your idea about putting stuff on the end of the stick with the sting on it. I think I have one somewhere but whatever was on it when I got it is long gone now. Maybe my kitties would play with that.

Since I'm still keeping both my kitties in, I'm trying to find new ways to play with them.

 

Well, I tried putting different toys at the end of the string and at first my kitties were interested and pawed at it a little but then seemed to get bored. I tried a ball with a bell in it and then I tried a stuffed mouse.

Then I tried putting nothing on the sting and just dangled it or pulled it in front of the kitties and the loved it. Go figure. Maybe I'm trying too hard. :mrgreen:

 

My kitty loves the wand with the toy dangling from it. When we are done playing with it, I wedge it in the arm of the couch so that it dangles down almost to the floor. It has a bell on it, so I can hear when she plays with it. It drives the dogs nuts because they can hear the bell in the basement but they aren't allowed down there, LOL.

I just bought a new one that was on clearance. It has a little stuffed elephant hanging on it. I hung the bag on the doorknowb of the basement while I dealt with other things, and Tesla kept going and rubbing on the bag! I wonder if it ha catnip in it - it didn't say so, but she loves it! She likes to bite the nose.

sunset, try a plain paper bag that's big enough for your kitty to crawl into. Once he is inside, poke at the bag or make scratching noises on it. Then try dangling things over the open end. My kitties LOVE empty bags and boxes.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, Jamiya. I do have a paper bag laying out in the living room but Socks and Mittens never seem to want to go in it. I'll have to try scratching it and coaxing them in. I just keep hoping they will go in and play on their own.