No Catnip Toys

Hi all! I was just wondering if anyone else could relate to this.

In addition to our kitties, my husband and I also own a pair of sugar gliders. Sugar gliders are VERY sensitive to catnip. It's toxic to them and very very dangerous. In short, we cannot have any catnip or catnip products in our house, which can make it very difficult to buy cat toys. Since most cat toys and cat furniture are manufactured in facilities with catnip (I'm sure you all know that...), it's not worth the risk.

As a result, our kitty-boys have a lot of homemade cat furniture and toys, human baby toys, and a handful of dog toys. Of course, despite our best efforts, the best toys they find are always things that they dig out of the trash. But oh well, they are happy.

How many of you are in a no-catnip situation? I'm always looking for new ideas for homemade toys, so maybe we could share some thoughts here, too.

While I don't have a catnip ban, my cats' favorite toy is Da Bird (as it is for many other cats--there are lots of posts about it in "What's New Pussycat?" about the fascination that cats have with this toy.

You can also get treat balls (arcatapet.com has some at a good price) and add your own homemade treats.

I also have a pair of sugar gliders. They are kept in my bedroom with the door closed. We don't have a "no catnip in the house" rule but we do have "no catnip in the bedroom". I also try to keep catnip toys away from my kitten Church (who also stays in the bedroom most of the time, so that works out) because Church gets too worked up and bite-y with catnip.

I'm not in that situation, but I wanted to say that you might want to look on ETSY (homemade ebay, sort of) many people sell crocheted cat toys there, most of which don't have catnip...I'm sure you could ask the seller/maker if they also made catnip toys, etc. to be safe.

Art