Negative Experiences with Cat Toys???

[joe dimeowgio]

I was just wondering what kind of bad experiences people here have had with cat toys, if any.

Specifically I'm making some toys for my cat using a thicker gauge hanging wire that I think should work out fine. I've made a mousey one and my cat plays with it a bit (he prefers string to everything & so I am trying new things out) and I'm especially wondering if anyone has any kind of bad experience with wire?  I'm also planning on making a few toys out of long, loose springs like the kinds you see in applications such as screen door hardware.  I was wondering if anyone had any experiences there either?  I think it will be safe but to be honest I am a lil worried about a claw getting in there or something.

And anything else, too.  I'm sure there are probably a thousand things.  I'm wondering most about what I should avoid in making toys for my little guy.  I know cats chew on lots of things in general that you may not want them too, i.e. I try to keep soft braided nylon away from my kitty because he chews on the stuff like it owes him money.  I also dislike frayed carpet pieces & fishing line just because I imagine both could become pretty dangerous if ingested.

 

[ritz]

I haven't made any complicated toys, I am so NOT handy about stuff like that.
But a word about wires: make sure they are flexible enough so they can mimic the animal behavior. For example, there are two kinds of wires that come attached to DaMouse--one is quite stiff and the other more flexible. I can manipulate/maneuver the one with the more flexible wire. Ritz is afraid of sudden movement, so DaBird was out--but the flexible nature of the wire in toy like DaBird would be even more important. With the mouse, I can drag it along the floor.
Also, don't make the wire too long; otherwise, if you fling it like a fishing pole, the wire could conceivable hit the cat or worse wrap around their paws. That happened to me several times with Ritz, scared her, and I simple no longer use that kind of toy. Rather, I use toys that utilize a soft string. But Ritz has never chewed anything so I'm not worried she'd try to chew the string.

 

[joe dimeowgio]

That makes sense, I'm going to try a much more flexible wire.  My cat doesn't seem to like his new mousey that much but it's probably because the wire is too stiff & doesn't look natural.

I'm going to try a spring too, see how he reacts to that.  That should move a little more naturally.

I'm always making things/building things/etc. so I like to play around with stuff... the kitty deserves some extra playtime and new toys in exchange for all the times he freaks out when the saws/router/etc. get going.

 

[ritz]

Glad to be of help.
Neat that you're so handy. You might want to try making your own puzzle box, I did it with a carboard box that contained letter size tabs and as such could be sealed tight.
Here is what a wooden box looks like.
http://www.chewy.com/cat/smartcat-p...m_content=hg&gclid=CNaa3PvxxLwCFUHNOgod2AYAvQ

Ritz was more interested in the cardboard box than the wooden box, perhaps because the cardboard box was smellier In any case, she quickly lost interest. But Ritz is not the, um, most intelligent cat on the block!

 

[joe dimeowgio]

I might try the cardboard one, with fewer holes then.  Those look a little too easy for the cat IMO since the cat can see the object so clearly.  Mine seems to like to hunt/search a lot and poke at things that are a little more hidden.  Or maybe the wooden one would be a good idea but with a sliding panel inside so that I could alternate which holes are open & which are closed, hiding the object more and adding an element of novelty.  

I actually made a little cardboard mousey game with a rectangular box top, 2 holes on each long side and one hole on each short side, and attached a mouse to a stiff wire and poked him randomly through different holes.  The cat liked the game but I think the wire was a little too stiff like you said above.

I made a toy yesterday with a thin gauge piece of picture hanging wire, much thinner, and this thing was a blast for my Puff!  I took a length of wire and taped 2" masking tape flat on the end so that the end looks like a spatula.  I threaded nylon sheath over a part of the end for a little added strength & attached the sheath to the wire and the shealth to the "spatula" end with electrical tape.

The reason I did that is because my cat's favorite game is when I put a piece of string underneath an interior door.  The problem is that the door bottom is a little long & the string sometimes binds up, and it's too wriggly to straighten out and easily slide underneath the door and back (I sit on one side of the door and push the string through the other side, where my cat stalks and pounces).  So the new little thing I made only took a couple minutes but man is it effective!  It kind of jumps like a little frog across the floor and dives underneath the door easily, and the masking tape end makes a little slapping noise as it skitters across the floor.

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• joe dimeowgio
• Feb 11, 2014

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• joe dimeowgio
• Feb 11, 2014

It looks crappy but it works.  I will make a stronger handle though & bind the object end in a better way, and I think I'll make a little froggy one that's green and a little field mousey one that's brown out of felt or something.  The thing works great because you kind of "walk" it across a surface like a dog on a leash and it makes a flapping noise as it goes along.

I put this thing together in a few mins too and left it over night after teaching kitty how to use it.  I woke up a couple times ealy in the morning and he was batting it around.  The design is so generic though, I'm going to be more creative and come up with something better probably.

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• joe dimeowgio
• Feb 11, 2014

 

[ritz]

I paid good money for the kind of toy that a cat can bat around.
Ritz didn't see the point of it (a kind way of saying: she wasn't quite sure how to play with it).
Ritz was possibly abused prior to my friend rescuing her off of the streets (she is very leary of brooms), so I have to be careful of the type of toys I buy for her.

 

[joe dimeowgio]

Aww I hope she wasn't abused.... she's a tuxedo like my Puff so maybe they're kindred spirits?  My Puff was a rescue and he's afraid of EVERYTHING.  (Man it's hard typing on this site, even with adblock plus it's slow).  Anyway he was rescued from trailer park (thankfully for both of us since said park was devastated by a tornado a few months ago) and must have spent the majority of his first few weeks in hiding because everything scares him.  He's seen members of the family, some multiple times, and he still won't go near them.  He's deathly afraid of the neighbor even though he sees me talking to him all the time, going over there and getting into his car, etc.  He's just a scaredy cat in general.  Vaccums, garbage trucks, package delivery, you name it and he's gone.  

Those cat batting toys though, I doubt they work for long in general just because they seem to do nothing more than ease a little bit of curiosity or boredom.  In nature the cat isn't going to bat the same thigns over and over, he'll be curious about something new and will want to play and so on sometimes, but cats are naturally roamers and hunters and so on and I think toys that are meant to be sniffed, stalked, judged at a distance and pounced on, etc. or just that are new period are going to be of greater interest.  Mine played with the little batty toy I made the first night and a couple swats afterwards, but that's been it for all I know.  Seems no longer to care.

However I did make a giant monstrosity of a thing out of scrap wood and some landscape fabric along with a contractor garbage bag (heavy mil) and created a long tunnel sort of thing with a chamber at the end which i think has a ton of potential & is something I'll probably develop later on.  I've noticed that cats just love tarps or really any kind of  cloth/fabric type of material that is thick enough to hold it's shape or which is draped over some other object to create a chamber/hideout.  I'll often have something in the yard that I'm either covering with a tarp temporarily or using a tarp for i.e. I'm painting something & letting it dry outside, and without fail, if there's a tarp around my kitty is there.  So I'm going to try some toys like that too, tunnels, chambers, etc. but with small entrances where the cats have to travel through dark, tight quarters and must use their whiskers for guidance.  That's something that cats have to do a lot of naturally as hunters in darkness.