Carrying Toy and Crying

[tlc4kids]

Huh!  That is what our cat, FIdo does as well.  He has a boa (a raccoon tail-looking thing on a stick) that he drags around the house crying.  He brings it to us at night but also follows us from room to room during the day howling up a storm.  Looks like nobody else replied but it would be nice to know why our cats do this.  Being in the field of child development, I call the boa Fido's transitional object.  But that could be anthropomorphizing quite a bit. 

 

[sakurablossom]

My cat Izzy also does this. She'll pick up any stuffed animal she can fit in her mouth and carry it around all while meowing. The weird thing is as soon as anyone sees her she'll drop it and walk away. I wish I could know why she does this. My two theories are that she treats them like she would her kittens or she treats them like they are prey that she has just killed. I'm not sure. Can anyone tell me?

 

[HarleyB1105]

If I can add to this post. I have a male cat that I found too young to be on his own. He actually crawled up inside a Harley-Davidson motor we had to remove the gas tank just to get him out. A dog was trying to get to him. This cat has shown changing behaviors over the past two years. I've done a lot of reading and it's helped out a lot on how to communicate with my cat. He also carries little balls that we bought him. I felt bad because we had his removed. When he was about 1 we tried getting a foster dog female in the house. My cat was going to kill that cat if it was the last thing he was going to do. No way was he allowing another cat in this house. I rescue rabbits here in South Florida. Of course it started mating because I never know if they've been fixed or not. I started house training some of them from little babies. You want to talk about a fascinating animal that communicates with his body the rabbit really does. My cat accepted every rabbit in this house. They were just part of his family. He plays with them and they play with him it's actually kind of cute. He's about two and a half years old now he used to be one of those cats that would take a a petting then bite your hand off for doing so. I didn't think I was going to be able to get that out of him. My first approach was definitely not the right one. I do spend tons of time with them since I work from home about 20 hour days. The one behavior that has never changed it is him walking around with his balls crying. The offer of prey is intriguing. It seems like my cat likes to do his whining in private. If he notices that were looking at him he stops. His behavior and our response to his behavior seems to keep going now we have it down to where he brings his balls in his food dish like he's feeding them. And he tries to walk us over to his food dish. He always stands in front of me and make sure that I'm following him. Recently all I've been doing is shaking his feeder and I thought that made him happy. I thought they was possibly two different behaviors. Why he's feeding his babies and a different Behavior come shake my food so I can have more. Now that I read this I'm going to see if grabbing the balls. That really didn't sound right. I'm going to see if it's something the balls as a prize changes or continues his behavior. Very cool post

 

[Kieka]

Another cat who does it here. Link absolutely loves kittens and other cats. He will carry toys all over the house, yelling at us around the toy. He also hides toys all over the yard, puts them near doorways and windows.

 

[HarleyB1105]

My apologies with the speech to text Agnus new Galaxy phones is horrible. Just in case somebody is wondering if I'm a literate or not. I had to do talk-to-text while driving