The Toys Cats Love: Part 3

Mrrrrr Friends,

People: every cat is different, and there may be toys that are perfectly healthy and wholesome for most cats, but, nevertheless, are a danger for the specific philosophies and practices of your feline friend. In this category, for me, are silky ribbons, thin strips of leather, tinsel and others. As a young he-cat, I thought of these as tools for charting the amazing feline digestive tract - a process Oom and Boo felt was too grueling. I won't tell you about the 2 week, 2 foot ribbon of my youth.

I've largely outgrown this position, but it raises the only rule we will promote during our review: pay attention to your cat! You can help provide them with fun, safe, and healthy toys.

A few other brief notes:

Inappropriate toys with other uses
Cat pals take note! Your person sincerely believes that the items just below, and others in this category are not cat toys. We know they are deluded, but if you play with these, I guarantee you that you person will yell and scream and try to think of ways to demonstrate their displeasure with you. This latter misguided activity - since cats are completely immune to the concept of punishment - usually leads to some reduction in the availability of kibble or stinky goodness.

It is not worth the risk. Having chewed on, played paw hockey with, and twisted myself into these objects - purely for the purposes of a thorough review - I can tell you, it isn't worth it. Stick to nip and cushy toys. I do still have a soft spot for the Apple Magic Mouse...it slides on maple flooring particularly well. Delicate handling of some of these items, in the presence of your person, might be considered cute (see just below) but be careful with this...it takes a certain skill and reserve to pull this off.

Appropriate toys with other uses
Remember, your cuteness quotient can propel upwards if you find objects in your person's world that they don't realize are toys and they don't mind when you show them they are. Any wad of paper works well, but that's pretty unimaginative. I favor bathtub stoppers or the cardboard inside of the human poop paper - though a pal of mine once pulled all the paper off to get to it so he could amuse his human, and for some reason, they weren't happy?! Coasters are on my top ten list...when they put their drinking glasses on them, don't play with them then! Any dangly thing that you will likely not break; if they are stupid enough to put a dangly thing on a door with a lock and you inadvertently lock the door via play, that's their bad. Dried beans, marbles (don't ingest!), small rocks, grass clippings...all good. Things they have put up high because they don't think you can go there...I know it's hard. If they will be good toys, and you have a cat pal at home - send her up there. If not, I don't recommend it.

Finally, don't play with your food. Keep your priorities straight.

One other thing. In our opinion, there are mutant toys. We want to be clear here...a nice furry mouse-like toy, no matter how well-made it is, should not have feathers coming out of its butt or any where else. Melding mammal traits with bird traits or any such half cat-half dog behavior is just poor taste. Say NO to mutant toys. And, if you see a bad toy thing happening...fix it. Try to engage your person and explain your concern, but if they do not act, step up. One warning though...it may be too late.

We'll have our round up and recommendations in our next blog.

The Toys Cat Love: Part 2

Mrrrrr Friends,

If you haven't read part 1 yet, off you go...scroll down. Come back when you've read it. One thing we cosmic cats know is that humans are, as a rule, very linear.

Me and Alex already laid out the first of our two overarching categories for helping humans choose the best cat toys: Action Toys. Today, we move on to the Lickitty-Sniff Doohickeys, commonly known in cat circles as LSD. Below, I've laid out some examples of prime LSD. Here, you see Alex sleeping off one of those crazed lickitty sessions with a new nip toy. Don't even ask about the car...don't lick and drive!

There are two keys to a fine LSD toy: texture and/or smelly/tasty qualities. I've covered texture elsewhere. Suffice to say, it should be intriguing to the cat tongue, but not overly ticklish or tacky. Sturdy for biting and bunny kicking, pliant but slightly resistant to the tongue.

But, let's be honest: it's all about the nip. High quality catnip can make the world a better place. It isn't our intention here, however, to go into a full review of the merits of fresh and/or dried nip.

Before we move on, a brief note about kittens, that is, young cats. For some unbelievable reason, some kittens are immune to catnip.  Have no fear, for the small minority of kittens for whom this is true, they grow out of it. Nip is a common language.

All the toys below meet our base criteria. They have organic nip in them. They have sturdy, lickable covers, since what we want to do is lick and slobber all over them to make them wet smelly good so we can rub them all over our body. These are all commercially available nip toys, but there is no reason that industrious humans cannot make these fine things for their feline friends.

Lower right you have your flax covering. Unfortunately, not the best quality nip inside and kinda itchy on the tongue. Lower left, two nice wool toys stuffed with nip. Nice, made for the cool folks at the One Stop Pet Shop in Amagansett, NY. Great store for the discerning cat. Middle bottom: a good idea that just failed - organic nip in corduroy. Just not our style...especially after Memorial Day. Very top; another good idea, somehow gone wrong...more may not be better. Little blue abstract mouse in the center is a beloved relic of a late great NYC pet store that was LSD purveyor to The Cat Who Came Before Me. She had impeccable taste.

The row starting with catcigars and ending in the lemon and the little fish - that's got our vote for the best freakin' LSD around. We love the Yeowww! brand nip and the sturdy canvas covers. The subtle shape of the banana (Alex's middle name), the action toy physique of the lemon, the neat package of the triangle that Alex refers to as her spanakopita. The pumpkin is fun, but aesthetically...ummmm. The Greenfish is, in my view, the crowning achievement of Yeow!!!! But I have not yet had the pollack. The little stripey fish is known as a stinkie, again, LSD as scooty action toy.

We've handed a few of these fine products around just to make sure we weren't hallucinating...or at least while we were writing this. Here's our pal Dusty, who lives downstate, approving of the fine Yeowww! banana:

That leaves the furry tiger mouse which is Alex's (above the flax mouse). This is her most important possession. It has a near twin. Alex sent this one to me at the shelter before I was adopted so we could meet by smell. It drove me nuts when I first laid paws on it because it smelled like high quality nip and like Alex. Alex always keeps these nearby. What's particularly smart about this toy is that you can replace the nip! It is a Smartycat toy. These folks make some great toys though several fall under our "mutant" subset detailed in part 3 of this series. 

These two categories - action and lickitty-sniff - are really just constructs to help you think. They can be distinct, but they can also crossover. Here, I demonstrate that a LSD toy, indeed my favorite toy, can be an action toy (kittens, as soon as possible, try this at home without the supervision of an adult cat):

For our next blog, important subsets of our two broad categories: inappropriate and appropriate toys and mutant toys.

The Toys Cats Love: Part 1

Mrrrrr Friends,

Let's get right to it.

You have only two more weeks to prepare for Diesel Day - an annual nationwide celebration of my adoption. Diesel Day is an opportunity to recognize the cats you love and do something special for the many homeless animals who depend on the warmth and safety of animal shelters in your community and mine.

Me and Alex have been working up a multi-part, but in no way exhaustive, review of cat toys to help you find that perfect Diesel Day gift for the furry one you love, or else a box of fine toys for your neighborhood shelter (check with them first to see if they have preferences on this front - kibble or money might be more useful). Please note that these toy ideas will also suit your furry feline on any day and for any occasion (like, just because you love them, or to make up for not getting up every two hours to open a can of stinky goodness). I understand this also works for humans, which is why I sometimes leave golden nuggets on the finest carpet in the house - but that's another blog.

First, some simplified cat-toy theory:

There are two broad categories humans can use to make sense of cat toy preferences: action toys and lickitty-sniff toys. Typical action toys - our subject today - include balls of any type, long ropey or dangly things, and compact scooty things.

Balls are very fun, should be available in a wide variety of sizes, levels of bouciness, and softness,  and do not need to be made just for cats (though they have to be safe to lick, chew, puncture, or sit on without falling apart or poisoning us).

I am very fond of my NCAA baseball, my tennis ball, and there's nothing quite like a little golf ball hockey on a hardwood floor at 3 in the morning to give your humans that special edge. The ball in the upper left is #15 my quintessential bathtub ball. My other favorite ball is the scushy leather ball third from the bottom. It is soft and made of fake leather, but very sturdy and lightweight, making it excellent for paw hockey.

The only ropey things allowed in our house for cats are either boating line (Alex prefers line at 1/4 and 3/8 inch gauge), or climbing rope (very nice at 3/16, witness the blue line below). The thinner lines, once capped (again, see the blue line below), also make fines leashes for a jessed Red-Tailed Hawk! Alex loves leather cord at about 1/4 inch width, but I love it so much that I have been known to eat it. This is also why twine, nylon string, ribbon, leather, and rubberbands are only kept in drawers in our house.

The long black thing below, is a coach or driving whip - it helps when your people are engaged in multiple odd professions. While a whip should only be employed by a responsible human intent on entertaining a cat, this tool-toy can drive a feline to distraction in no time flat. We favor a sturdy, hand-made leather coach whip with braided horsetail ends. This keeps a lot of cool horsey folks employed (good horsey people do not beat their horses with whips). But you can use a willow branch or a cane with a securely attached leather strap.... To be clear for all those probing eyes and ears online, we are not endorsing torture, only good clean, family fun, nothing kinky, please, oh please!

The last grouping falls less neatly into the action category: compact scooty things.

For some cats, quality fur or leather falls into the lickitty-sniff category. We respect that, but for us, the fine brand toy Rosie Rat is an action toy. We don't want to lick Rosie, but we understand that some cats may be enriched by this activity. Rosie is top center in the above photo. The two furry rat fellows to her right are Roger and Roberto - our names. The furry behemoth below the Rosies is a toy we love to hate. It's very special fur wrapped around a crappy plastic thing that we can't recycle, but we can't help ourselves...while not our favorite toy, it fills a deep, dark, drooling, crazed void.  And it was a gift to us from our Wisconsin vet, Dr. Mara. Leather mice, wool mice - especially boiled wool, and canvas mice (or other shapes) can all be very appealing scooty toys. We want them to be organic, super sturdy (of course we bite and bunny-kick them!) and not dyed with something that comes off on our tongues.

Wine corks!!!!! We love wine corks. At times there have been dozens laying around, all well played with. We prefer a good French Bordeaux, an Italian Barolo, a California Zinfandel, even a Tunisian Pinot.

Thread spools (no thread!), wood doo-dahs that roll and trip people in the dark, single piece clothing pins - all good clean fun.

And, we cannot move on without extolling the virtue of the foil ball. We do not do tinsel sparkle balls - remember I like to eat things - but we do love a well formed foil ball. Preferably made of red foil from dark Dove chocolates. One of the forgiving things about foil balls? When your people step on them, it won't hurt their foot and make them scream, and, even flat, the foil "ball" is awesome.  To wit:


Next time: Lickitty-Sniff Doohickeys (LSD)