Warning: This post is 90% gratuitous cat photos and 10% craft tutorial for people who enjoy gratuitous cat photos. If you are a dog person, feel free to click away and see what Perez is doing today. Try back again tomorrow.
So here is the thing about cat toys: not that many cats like them.
Cats are active creatures but it appears that squeeze toys and jingle bell balls don’t cut it. Cat’s are fickle. They like texture. They like smells. They like sounds reminiscent of rodent-like death rattles.
Lola hates toys. I just can’t tell you how much money I have wasted on jangly bits, only to take them home to dangle before Her Highness and be shot down with a look, as if to say, Seriously? WTF am I supposed to do with a raccoon tail on a stick? Pathetic. Don’t you have a bathmat I can pee on? Seriously? A racoon tail….HA! That’s a good one.
So a couple months ago, when I saw her take an interest in a pile of vintage ric rac I was giving away, it was a momentous occasion. Initially I thought she was drawn to the smell, but no, it’s the texture she likes. The skinny ric rak is a particular favorite. It runs through her paws and she thinks it’s alive or something. I just dangle a string and she goes at it like a prize fighter. Tape it to a stick and it gets even better.
Materials
- Wooden dowel as long as your arm
- Skinny rick rack trim, roughly as long as you are tall
- Electrical tape
Do y’all really need instructions? Just get your kitty dancing and go to town.
We could do this all day.
so cute!!
Toooo cute! I could make that!
Carol
I love gratuitous cat photos! 🙂
My cats really like the little plastic kinder surprise eggs that the toys come in. I spent about an hour tonight flicking one around the house for them. We actually only stopped because it disappeared.
My cat Mojo is crazy for chenille stems wrapped around a pencil to make a springy curly-q. It will keep him busy for hours. If I am not fast enough making them for him he will find the package of stems and help himself.
I love me some big fluffy kitty!
It appears Lola will have “custom made” only…never enough pics of the Lovely Lola!
Shannon likes sticks and everything remotely stick- shaped. Hope likes string, with a passion. Erin attacks random stuff that moves and Bob just attacks. And finds the bath mat ^^
Best thing to get them all into action is the good old laserpointer, which is the only designated cat toy I’ll ever buy again in my life!
My three little black devilish ones not only have a dislike for cat toys. They hate them! Really… in less than 5 minutes they have broken every single bought cat toy. I leraned really fast but family and friends still brought them as little gifts.
And every single one of my cats has it’s own preference for stuff which can be used as toy.
Grusel even just likes a certain kind of a ball of wool. It has to be the catania made out of cotton. Another company, kind or material he ignores! Strange… ^^
Add shoestrings to the list! I have to be careful anytime I tie my shoes…or have time to play with them. Which I do! And NEVER leave shoestring outside the shoe once I take the shoe off…or it will be chewed up! Cats are easy to please, and they rule us, of course. Love ’em.
My Alice-cat loves pipe-cleaners, the nylon laces for Ginny’s lacing cards, a penguin-shaped Christmas ornament that she snatched from the tree 5 years ago. Cat Cora doesn’t like anything, as far as I can tell. Except peeing on bath mats.
Our cat has definitely given me that snotty look before. It doesn’t take much…show her a camera, our kid or a cat toy and she’s gone. I don’t have much rick rack around right now, but I just may have to get some to try this out. Thanks for the tip!
Yes, I am a dog person..but these pics of Lola, esp. the ones with her little mout open, are gasp-inducingly cuuute. She is a darling and the fact she loves vintage ric rac only proves you were meant to be together.