Thread: Which toys?

Im working on a thread entitled "Cheap Cat Toys" where the idea is to come up with easily sourced stuff to make free / cheap toys. I too nearly spent a fortune, but then quickly found that they play with a £1.00 item as much as a £1000.00 item. Ive got a small collection of ideas and video + photos to accompany them at the moment.

Easy ideas like:
1: Some form of stick (garden cane / old duster handle) + string + ball of newspaper tied to the end. (Note this needs to be put away after playing due to the string. Dont want it getting swallowed and stuck)

Cant promise but I will try and get it posted asap.

It's amazing what things they take to. At the moment, Hank loves my daughters hair bobbles (the furry ones), he also loves playing with toilet roll tubes, fluff, my handbag, buttons, basically anything that he can push around, shiny or fluffy! Lol.
I even filled a paint tray with water (in the shower) and he paddles in that all the time.

Looking forward to your ideas Tomiam, could do with saving some money, lol.

I wouldn't spend money either, mine just seems to destroy anything I spend money on

At the moment she is destroying/playing with...
ping pong ball, beads, lids off various things, sellotape roll, folded crisp packets, Xmas bows, various string type things, a wind up toy

Originally Posted by missdiane

I wouldn't spend money either, mine just seems to destroy anything I spend money on

At the moment she is destroying/playing with...
ping pong ball, beads, lids off various things, sellotape roll, folded crisp packets, Xmas bows, various string type things, a wind up toy

Its amazing what they amuse themselves with lol. I caught Hank trying to take off my coat button today. Now thanks to him I have some lovely teeth marks on them.

Originally Posted by RiaBoo

Its amazing what they amuse themselves with lol. I caught Hank trying to take off my coat button today. Now thanks to him I have some lovely teeth marks on them.

It seems almost everything we have now has teeth marks in it, Lucius just chews anything and everything, even the stainless steel toilet roll holder! To attempt to combat this, I brought him a baby's teething ring and it has worked to some degree, if you draw his attention to it he will sit and happily gnaw it for ages which is good!

Our other tip is if you regularly hang your washing on a close horse, tie a little furry toy such as a little mouse to some string and hang it off one of the rods - instant hours of fun - and if he is attacking the mouse he isn't attacking the socks!

Thanks for the replies... I'm thinking I will get some cheap stuff and make my own.

I know our other cat loves the feather duster... to the point that he has destroyed several of them... and that's only a couple of dollars so a good source of feathers.

I do want to get some cat nip and cat grass to plant outside in the cat run for the cats.

A mothers' plight and worry ...

Sebastian and the others loved and love in the following order:

Soft!!!!! foam balls for about 0.60 Eur each
- they hide I find and deposit them in their toy basket - 5 min later they are all hidden again. They love to "carry" them around.

String or bead chains -
like the ones on christmas trees - I gave them a meters length of the big pearls - they make a noise on the floor and snake around.

Cat teasers for 3 Euros each

and all the rest they can get their paws on and in - like the water bowl. One investment I did NOT regret was a STURDY and TALL cat scratch drumm (not a post but a cylinder with big caves) so they can claw away without falling over.

BTW a neat toy for kitten is a shoe carton with a few paw size holes cut into. Place a ball. string or treat inside and watch - or an IKEA paper shopping bag ....

HAVE FUN

We have a box of cat toys which do get used, but Larry and Monty's favourite toy is a scrunched up piece of paper, any size will do. I can get their attention instantly by taking a piece of waste paper and scrunching it up noisily, then they play football with it for ages.

The other thing is that Larry is totally obsessed with the dishcloth. If he so much as sees me wiping the kitchen counter, he comes flying across the room and if I'm not careful, he runs up my leg and tries to swipe the cloth from my hand -ouch!- boy you should see the scratches! He's 3.2kgs now so he's really too big to be doing this. It's impossible to wipe any surface with Larry in the room. He also relieved me of the brush the other day when I was sweeping up crumbs.

We have started to discourage Larry's climbing habit by flicking him with water - if we can get him in time! Talk about rough and tumble - it's like having a dog!

Expensive catnip toys? No interest... only the occasional half-hearted slap when walking past.

The lid of a coke bottle (big, plastic-y ones) and an empty Läkerol pack with a piece of string attached? Best toys... they even fetch it if they want me to play with them.

Even a piece of string tied to a chair will make an interesting toy.

Our cats do play with lots of everyday things, though many of their favorites are not what we want them to play with (e.g., bottle lids, tube caps, things that we do not want lost). I have always thought that the toilet paper rolls would be great fun, but not a single one of our MCs has ever done more than bat one a couple of times before walking away. Total bust. Cats vary!

Besides the obvious small soft/furry mice, if I had to pick the number one favorite toy of most of our cats as kittens, it would be these:
Petmate Looney-Loops Cat Toy at PETCO

I have spent hours and hours shooting these around the house for the cats to chase, and current kitten loves batting them around by himself on the kitchen tile. They are pretty cheap, but you have to own quite a few of them because they keep getting temporarily lost. I think we have bought 4-5 packs of them. Only ever seen these at Petco unfortunately.

A more pricey classic favorite of all our cats is the Star Chaser (*every* breeder has these):
Star Chaser Turbo Scratcher Cat Toy at PETCO

By contrast, the more enclosed ball loops are fun for young MC kittens, but their paws quickly get too large for most so I would not recommend buying them. The open Star Chaser is much more practical. Even if they are only mildly interested in the ball, they will probably love the scratching part.