What Do You Use?

Excuse me if this has been asked. I was wondering what different home made teasers ya-all have come up with. Our three cats go wild after a very simple wood dowel about 3' long with a gift wrap ribbon attached to the end also about 3'.

I use a ¼" wood dowel because it's very light, and can get whipped around. The ribbon (any color really) has to be stapled or tied well, because we all know how fast cats are. Either dangled above, or swished around on the floor, they love it.

I'm eager to hear.

For handy string on a stick toys I've used a kitchen utensil (with the hole in the handle) and a shoe lace, I also have one that is the fly swatter, again, with the shoe lace on the end. They also have some terrific bought wand toys. I rotate all toys.

One tip, you may already know this but just in case someone doesn't: Never leave those ribbon sticks out when you are not using them. Cats can and will chew through and swallow them..and that is dangerous.

Only one of my 3 kits play with toys and that is Arwen...but most of the time she is happy with just a bit of string of anything you wave about in front of her, most of the time it's my pen

Haha, not really 'homemade', but Genever loves this golf ball that came out of nowhere about a month ago, I think I got it at some convention or expo thing a few years ago, it's got a company logo on it. I have no idea where it was or how she found it, but all of a sudden a golf ball appeared on the floor and she just loves it.

I use my silky robe sash. It's extra long so I can really whip it around, or I can put it thru my belt loop and just walk around the house trailing it behind me and become the pied piper. Also, the fabric is such that they don't get their claws stuck in it. But they also really like the stretchy gold tie string stuff that people use on packages that I just tie onto the end of a plastic stick with a small wire loop at the end that's part of a broken cat toy from years ago. I definitely have to put that away after play, though, because they can chew threw it and swallow it

I have some homemade teasers, one has the foil 'da bird' attachment on it, a few different feather ones, a fishy toy that I've sewn up, she LOVES this flappy bird stuffed toy that came from a wal-mart teaser (she carry's that thing all over the house!), though Storm's favorite toys are pens, yes pens! I find pens all over the house when I'm cleaning she likes to pick them up with her paws the toss them around. I think I'm going to teach her to write soon, she has enough thumbs to be dactyl!!

I've never made anything, but Mialo likes random objects. He will play with anything! Today I caught him stealing my bras and kicking toilet paper!
He goes crazy for plants, fruits and vegetables though. I'm not sure why.
Maybe the way they smell? He gets into them when I'm not looking.

I made Newt a toy out of a shoelace with a bunch of feathers tied to the end of it. She loves it, we have to play with it every night.

I made my babies a toy by putting alpaca fleece - we have an alpaca ranch nearby - in a jingle ball. Well it's not so much a toy as a bit of a mood stimulant. I've had three cats who've played with it. They don't try to eat it, it just makes them sloooooooooooow down and get really sweet.

Tomu absolutely adores a ball made out of Utu's hair! He carries it around and gets jealous if someone else dares to play with it.. Very cheap, silent, and I can easily get a new one if something happens to it: I just have to brush Utu and make a new ball out of the fur.

My hand (or feet) under the duvet. My lovely, late Lucy loved to play when she was younger. Unfortunately, because of her crippled paw, which bent backwards and her claws were permanently out on that paw, teasers were out of the question. Just to dangerous for her.

Her favourite game, which she still liked to play up until late last year was "Pounce".

I would move my hand under the duvet and she would pounce on it. She would make funny "Mrrr-mrrr" noises and sometimes a noise that resembled an explosion. Like a "Kkksssstttt" (almost like a very loud click/spit). She would play like this for ages.

She got me really good one time, not long after I'd adopted her. She played pounce on my bare foot which was sticking out from under the duvet.

Not the best way to wake up and the smug look she gave me as if to say "Ha! Gotcha! Now you can get up" was priceless. That was the end of my Sunday lie-in

Her claws went right into my foot and it was quite painful for a day or two.

Still, I could forgive Lucy anything...even when she decided our new bedroom carpet made an excellent scratching post - to the extent it now sports a semi-circular hole, right down to the floorboards! It was the way she would look at me if I caught her doing it - "I'll claw it if I like". The look said it all LOL.

Now that Lucy is no longer with us, we are going to switch bedrooms with my son. He had the larger room so he could house his dialysis machine and equipment. That's no longer needed now so we're about to redecorate both rooms and put down laminate flooring.

We wouldn't do it before because Lucy had gone almost blind due to old age and knew where everything in our room was. I felt it would have been too upsetting for her to have to learn where everything was again.