We decided to stop buying toys forever ago and made homemade toys like: Footies from the store (a favorite), rollers, gloves, and anything that moves! Does anyone else know of any good homemade toys?
With so many cats, I don't hardly buy toys- I use empty spools of thread, toilet paper rolls (empty) crumpled cellophane, crumpled pieces of papers. my cat's favorite is to take a newspaper and spread it on the floor sprinkle catnip between the sheets of newspaper and let the cats have the pile. Another favorite is plastic straws.
Corks, particularly the big ones from champagne bottles, which shouldn't be hard to find this time of year, cardboard boxes, perhaps taped together to make a "fortress" with holes to climb in and out of, balls of crinkled silver foil to bat around, coasters (we have felt-backed copper ones that JC loves to push off the table and slide across the floor), guitar picks (but make sure they're "specialty picks" that fit over the fingertips and are too big to swallow). The Sunday edition of your newspaper, when tossed on the floor, can also offer hours of amusement. Paper shopping bags (without handles), or the large "lawn and garden bags", are usually a hit, too.
That's a good point, M.A. If it's just a matter of batting it around, it's okay, but if the cats are chewing on it, it should be taboo. Other potential toys that should be blacklisted are: yarn, string, dental floss, metal bottle caps, toothpicks, tinsel, angel's hair, wire, rubber bands ... who can add a few more "no-nos"?
I sit and watch my boys chase a piece of kibble around the floor. They will fish out one piece, bat it around the floor for 5 minutes, then pounce on it, eat it and go back for more. They'll chase that kibble around all their other toys.
A toy I have made in the past takes an old pair of pantyhose, cut both feet from the knee down, put a large ball and catnip in the toe, put that inside the other foot and then knot the hose above the heel.
The grocery store knows know to automatically give me paper instead of plastic, and at any one time there's at least two paper bags on my living room floor.
Jeepers likes to play with cooked meat, I rip up cooked chicken breast for her as a treat and she happily tries to 'kill' it for ages before she actually eats it. It's a bit messy but she tends to stay on the lino so it's easy clean up!
plastic bags with handles would fall in the no no department. Unsupervised it can end badly if the cat gets caught in the handle. My Trips are fascinated with toothpicks and I ended up having to put my toothpick bird up high so they can't get to them. Early this year I had a sad email from a member whose cat got ahold of a book of matches while she was at work. The cat ended up burning her mouth quite badly from the sulphur. Not that I think anyone here would give a cat a book of matches as a toy, but if you have them lying around, you might think twice about leaving them so loose.
You even have to watch the commercial cat toys. My friend got this little soft fabric ball thing with feathers coming out of the top. Herbie loved the thing, but we stopped watching him for 5 minutes, and true to his form, he takes it over to the water dish for a little marinade, and then sat with it in the food dish and ate the feathers off of it. This cat will consume anything! Fortunately, he always takes it to the food dish when he is getting ready to devour, so if you don't hear the crunch of kitty kibble, it's time to check up on him.
Just like little kids.....if they are being quiet, they are up to something!
We could do an entire thread on 'dangers to kitty' - they can get into trouble with the most amazing things! I had to start turning off my gas stove in my apartment at the wall b/c when I was at work they would get up on the stove & lay on it b/c of the warmth from the pilot light...I didn't know they were doing this until one day I came home & found one of the burners on!
You have to look at any toy as a cat would, and try to imagine if there's any way they could hurt themselves with it.
A flashlight can make a great toy if you don't have a laser pointer...some cats go bonkers trying to chase the beam.