They also liked jumping for it if I held it high in the air, and batting it around the floor. And of course holding it and ripping at it with their teeth - it's very tough! (As my cats enjoy ripping and spitting, I'm not worried about them eating any shredded chunks, but I do pick them up and bin them when they finally succeed in tearing off a piece.) And of course the next metamorphosis of this toy was to attach it to the 'Da Bird' wand and turn it into a whizzing wand toy. Lots of successful sommersaults with this toy! Just look at the glee on Ava's face when she caught it in her little paws!
Well, it's winter and we are upping our vitamin C intake and fighting colds. Cue a big bag of oranges - too big for a home in a cupboard or the fridge. So they were plonked on the kitchen bench...only to have me turning in puzzlement at a strange ripping noise, and cats on the bench! Both Kato and Ava were fascinated with the tough, mesh orange-bag. So I cut off a piece for them and threw it on the floor. POUNCE!
They also liked jumping for it if I held it high in the air, and batting it around the floor. And of course holding it and ripping at it with their teeth - it's very tough! (As my cats enjoy ripping and spitting, I'm not worried about them eating any shredded chunks, but I do pick them up and bin them when they finally succeed in tearing off a piece.) And of course the next metamorphosis of this toy was to attach it to the 'Da Bird' wand and turn it into a whizzing wand toy. Lots of successful sommersaults with this toy! Just look at the glee on Ava's face when she caught it in her little paws!
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Here's a quick piece of amusement: put a few icecubes in their bowl of water (obviously works well in summer). The clinks as the cubes float and bump the sides of the bowl, as well as the ice 'crackles' as it starts to warm, add even more interest to the vision of things moving in their water! Both Ava and Kato will spend an intense 5 mins trying to fish out those ice cubes. Hindered of course by the pesky water that keeps wetting their paws or going up their noses. Prepare for snorts and shaking paw-droplets, and a good activity to drain some of their boundless curiousity. Christmas has been fun. We got a new Jamie Oliver Home Cooker - the big box was very exciting for Ava and Kato. They played 'who can get in the box first?', ambush chasey, hide and seek chasey, and footsies under the side flaps. Plus 'can I dive-bomb through all the flaps into the box?' (when it was in its upright position!)
Then there was the wrapping. We had a few variations attached to the wand toy, the winner being a combo of some squished Christmas paper and wrapping ribbon. Ava gave us her best examples of 'Flying Grey Streak'. She doesn't seem to like to jump onto the stool from the front -always from the back! And then she likes a bit of cat yoga, remaining flooped over the back so her haunches are suspended. After all the hunting, stalking, and flying, she also likes a lazy play - lying down with all four legs in the air and mouth (teeth) active! Yep, weeds are good - especially when you make a new game with them. Today husband-man threaded a weed through the hollow of a foam tube, and that little bit of green disappeared and re-appeared in a tantalising manner. The foam tube is, in itself, very good to grab and kangaroo-kick, with a yielding texture that is apparently fun to also bite chunks from. So the grass gets chased, and the tube also gets grabbed. We got this foam tube from Clark Rubber - if you have a foam exercise roller, chances are you will already know how attractive such a material is to cats (ours is sorely battered). Click on the photos below to make the series larger... (remember also to choose grass that is non-toxic to cats). Update 29/05/2014: I recently received a concerned comment about the safety of this toy. Their key issues were about the choking hazard of foam if chunks were taken from it, and also from toys where plastic bags were involved.
This is a valid concern. As always, with all toys, as I've often said throughout this blog, common sense prevails. Play WITH your cat so you can always see any potential dangers. If an invention proves to be less than desirable, then scrap it. If a toy in session starts to develop shreds or potential dangers, change/remove or fix it. Put your toys away afterwards. And know your cat - each cat will have different predilections (for trouble!). For this toy in question: 1. it is an interactive toy, where the weed is the primary target as shown in the pictures, and humans are supervising 2. as a potential choking hazard, this has as much potential as other commercial cat toys, or cat-safe plants, or a cardboard box, or their food- which is in far larger pieces 3. the 'chunks' that were ripped out in session were not ingested and not a potential danger - they were not even noticed by our cats. The size was crumb-like, as can be seen from the picture. The shape was rounded, not a more dangerous strand-shape, which could wrap around the intestines causing a blockage. 4. we put away this toy after the play session - the weed was what they were after in anycase 5. we know our cats. Both of them are shreddders - they rip and spit, never ingesting. But we DO know Kato has a thing for rubber bands, so we have taken protective measures as described in that post. As always, any comments, concerns and feedback are appreciated. Bringing a bit of the outdoors inside is lovely for cats. And we've found that a long weed makes an excellent 'wand toy'. It has the added advantage of its green smells to entice a feline, and if picked long enough, is quite convenient for a human to operate. One note of caution - pick a plant that is not toxic to cats. We use the grass they like to eat on their walks. It looks very much like our pots of cat grass, and in fact, one of our pots has gone crazy and the massive stalks have sprouted a wheat-type feather of seeds - very similar to the wild grown grass they munch. And that brings me to another caution for the humans....while the head of seeds makes a delightful rattle, they WILL come off and spray everywhere in play! Not great for the house. Oh, and you'll need to judiciously play with such a weed dependant on where you live. The same things grow in Western Australia, but they are baked by the climate so the seeds are little daggers. We learned the hard way on our last holiday there with Kato - he got one of those seeds stuck in his throat. It did get swallowed, but had irritated his throat. The emergency vet said there are a lot of problems with these grass seeds, as they are so sharp, they can imped in mouths/throats or even in an animals skin. Fortunately over here in Victoria, the climate is much gentler, and the same grasses just don't do this. Moral of the story, use your judgement, and if in doubt, just rip off the seeds (like you probably did when you were a kid!). Have you seen David Attenborough's footage of the North Pole? It includes amazing film of an Arctic Fox springing up into the air and arrowing down, paws extended, to punch a hole in the ice and catch a fish! Ava has this move down pat. Unfortunately, it is most often used in bed at night, on a certain sensitive part of husband-man's anatomy - I get woken by the yells. But I end up laughing it's so funny! If the dive bomb doesn't quite get the thing, she ends up scratching around trying to get through/at it or under the covering material. Which also elicits disapproving sounds in the middle of the night.
As a game however, this instinct makes for engaged cats. Both Ava and Kato are riveted by any cover I put out, always suspecting something is under it. So I put things under, attached to strings, which slowly get pulled along the length of the blanket or towel (underneath of course!). They love the 'Arctic Fox' game. And it is something I can do when I don't want to get up from the couch. Sometimes the towel covers me as well, and the toy gets woven behind my back and under my knees, accompanied by squirming cat. This is a game where I get to SIT! And while Ava and Kato don't get a 'panting with tongue hanging out' workout (this does happen!), their brains are fully switched on, and the exhaustion is achieved through a mental rather than physical means. And they are smart. Frequently they don't even look at the toy, but straight at my hands to see where it's going to pop out! So, I have talked about toy rotation, and environment enrichment, and generally catching and latching onto a cat's senses (sound, smell, sight - it is tuned for movement far more than ours). While I was reviewing a Kato video recently, I remembered that my clever husband-man makes use of the sound sense in yet another way - he trash talks the cat! And this revs Kato up SO much.
A typical yarn would be, while waving a mouse toy on Kato's bed, "You think you can beat me? you think you can beat me? Well I'm in your house, the mouse is in your house. Ooh, it's nice in here. Bet you can't get me. Oh no you can't." Kato leaps and the mouse is whisked away. "I win again! That's one to zero, one to zero. Who's the best? I'm the best! Bet you can't catch me...."etc. I can't quite work out how Kato knows that this is part of the game, but he does. I guess it is the excitement of someone talking to him and being so involved with the game that they are prepared to be totally ridiculous and abandoned. Cats KNOW when you're into it. In fact, Kato will not accept lazy plays, where the human is flicking the toy while watching tv. He wants our attention...so he leaves the toy, and comes over to us, and either meows in our face, or hugs our leg and meows at us! As you can see from this Kato the Korat cat video, words are not even necessary to rev up Kato - at around 20secs in, husband man is both tapping his toy, and making ridiculous cat noises before Kato commits to the leap and chase of the lemongrass stalk. I've also heard man-made squeaks and squawks in the midst of other games! As you can gather from all my posts on wand toys, these are used more than daily in our home! Last night our two furries waited with avid interest while husband-man made a new toy for them. And then we had two hurricanes bolting around and over the furniture in frantic chase of this thing that was attached to the DaBird wand. We played for over an hour, and had to remake the toy twice! The 'toy' was simply (but imaginatively) a scrunched up ball of paper, placed inside an inflated plastic sandwich bag - the bag got decimated twice. So we also tried a tiny toy mouse inside the second bag...winner!
What makes it such a good toy? The plastic and paper rustle. The allure of something hiding in the bag. The yielding inflation. The pesky toughness of the plastic that won't allow them to instantly get at the lurking thing inside. The flick and speed of the whole thing attached to the DaBird wand. And husband man's re-arrangement of our furniture into a circuit so that they zoomed around the room with minimal floor contact. Just to give you an idea of what that looked like, this is an early version of our circuit (it has grown!) - Kato is actually chasing a stick of lemongrass (he goes bananas over the smell and pulls them out of our shopping bags the minute we get home): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3UVR50WEBM The inspiration for this new toy came from watching some old movies of Kato as a kitten. We had made this toy before...but it was 'new' because of the wand element (and the 2 years break in between). So yes, this is a 2-in-1 toy - it can be a stand alone toy (but it works better if you admire your cat while they rabbit around with it, plus we always watch over plastic bags for safety), and it can be a wand toy. Here's Kato after our first stand alone version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydNjYX2Ect0
An exhausted cat 'flop'
Wand toys are the best toys for exhausting your cat, which is super important for high energy cats like our Korats! And a happy cat is a cat who has had their energy drained - otherwise it can mean they are wound too tight (stress...which leads to illness), or they are finding fun we don't like. Actually, I do have to say that now we have Ava, a second high energy cat trumps a wand toy, and playing human-cat chasey will sometimes trump a wand toy - but it's not so physically easy on the human! So wand toys are very, very high on the list of ways to expend cat energy. As you can see from Ava's picture, the 'flop' is what we aim for when we play. This is a cat who is thoroughly satisfied with playtime. And depending on our cat, we may need more than one flop! High energy cats are also often high-intelligence cats. This means they need heaps and heaps of variety in terms of toys, play style, and changing up the environment. Variety captures their intense interest and keeps them going bananas during playtime. So here are a few more home-made toy ideas we have used with success. You can roll the toys, throw the toys, and of course, do the ultimate - tie or fix them to a wand like the 'DaBird' wand: -Scrunched up Alfoil (good for sound) -A piece of baking paper (good for sound and satisfying to shred, but lasts longer than tissues or paper) -Twist ties. Get six and add them together one by one, by twisting each one around the middle of another. You end up with a 12 legged 'spider' that has great tactile interest as it is a bit 'springy'. You can see how crazy Kato went for this toy when he was a kitten: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8nb2JPJ0Kk -Remove the rope handles from gift bags. They're thick enough not to be eaten and a nice soft toy. Our cats carry these around the house and sometimes will play fetch with one particular orange rope. -If you sew, fabric offcuts, ribbon, and most dressmaking things are endlessly fascinating. Lycra fabric is nice as it is stretchy and doesn't fray. I have had to rehome my pin cushion though - into a screw top tub. -Packaging. Bubble wrap, product tags, firm moulded plastic like a nanobug package (even has a hole so it can easily be attached to the 'DaBird' wand!) -Paper-towel roll. Well, you CAN give it to them complete with the paper towels and they will definitely love it (you may not), but I speak more about the inner cardboard tube. Cut it into various sizes - you could even cut the tube open for something a bit sneaky that 'grabs' back at a paw. -Plastic Milk Bottle Rings, or similar. Yesterday we had fascinated cats using a small clear plastic ring from a pop-top choc milk bottle. They make an interesting scritchy sound. And then...you COMBINE toys. The toy in the photo above is a paper-towel roll (cut small), plus one side of the nanobug plastic package. The two together make a good scritchy sound, and somehow, when you add two things together - even when each individually is 'exhausted' - you have a brand new interest grabbing toy!
Go Cat Cat-Catcher Mouse; new and old
First off the bat I must mention the favourite toy of the past two weeks...go cat replacement mice attached to the DaBird pole. As you can see, our first mouse, in use a year ago, got thoroughly trammelled and has lost his tail and ears. Our new mouse has already lost an ear. Such is the frenzy these mice incite...both Ava and Kato react as if they are the real McCoy. Once caught, the mouse is even dragged off to a lair and munched upon. So, in amidst the crazies inspired by this toy, do keep an eye out for small parts you may need to snatch up for safety's sake. The original toy comes as a short wand toy with the string being thin wire. We don't use this anymore, as the wire made our cats shake or lick their paws, and that was the inspiration to switch the mouse over to the softer Da Bird wand. In our opinion, that modification made for an UBER toy! It has also inspired other add -ons; bread clip ties, rope handles from gift bags, sales tags, hair elastics, cheap things from haberdashery stores like feathers, fur, and sparkly fabric. The possibilities are endless... After the crazies have worn off, we then change up the play environment to get even more interest and use from our toys. This is what it looked like this morning... A cardboard box, a sheet of cardboard packaging, a carpet rug I purchased for $15 (100% wool for safer toxin load). The carpet - or anything you get that is texturally different - adds value in and of itself and will be investigated, rolled on, jumped and scratched, tunnelled under and through even before you add in a toy! In fact the way you configure various bits and pieces makes an unlimited 'new' toy environment. Which is exactly what we want with active clever cats!
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