Playing With Cats

I am struggling to find new games to play with my kitten. And she's getting bored of the games we play. 

We are playing with a pinpon ball. I toss it and she catches it and maybe plays with it for a while, then gets bored. We have shoe ties, I hold them and she tries to catch it. 

Lately, she is into bags, especially nylon bags. She gets into one and plays for a while. 

There are two boxes which I modified to have a tight entrance so that she feels safe in there. She spends some time there, and then she gets out.

I got a toy which a red thing rotates under a cover, she tries to catch it. That's what she likes most nowadays.

Also sometimes I put something into a hole (between two pillows or a similar place) and she spends some time to find it.

How are you playing with your kitten? And if there is one, please tell me a game in which she knows she's playing with me, not hunting. If not, that's okay. I accepted her seeing me as a bed or a pillow.

What about instead of just holding or dangling toys, get something like a wand with a toy at the end and run around the house? Kismet loves when I actually take off running with a wand toy and she sees it disappearing around corners (really gets her hyped up). You can change the speed and height, get her sneaking, running, and jumping. Lately I've been having her run or jump up the wall to catch them.

We also have a small plastic cap that came off of the wand toy accidentally and I toss that from one end of the apartment to the other - because it's lightweight and bounces so well, both cats love it. Sometimes Kismet will posture like she wants to be chased, so I'll chase her around too.

Mo likes to be riled up, so he likes when his toys assault him - usually straws and paper that has been rolled up. I stress that he likes this, because some cats will be really annoyed and bothered by this, but Mo likes being poked and provoked with these things and then he goes wild chasing and batting at them. I let my boyfriend do this because I really don't want my hands getting too close to that play time.

When you're playing with a cat, you're essentially having her hunt. That's a good thing, because it enriches her home environment. Because these things happen when you're there and on the opposite end of the string or the ball, she knows to build that association of "play" (cat play) with you.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am going to try the wand thing. 

However, Sakız does not like being assaulted. I don't know about facial impressions of cats much, but even I can tell she gets angry by this.

Sometimes we play chase around the house. She starts to run, I run after her. Then she stops at somewhere, and then I turn around and start running. This is not something we do nowadays, but we did it many times before.

I'm not sure about her associating me with the toy, hence the game, because she rarely looks at me while playing. But maybe she knows that I'm there, I don't know.

I wouldn't recommend the assaulting for typical cats. Mo is my boyfriend's cat and he's been playing with him like that since he brought him home as a kitten, but it's not something I would continue with Kismet or any future pets. Mo may like it, but to me, it doesn't seem that nice.

To be fair, I think cats are pretty distracted when they play. They definitely know the difference between a toy with you on the other end vs a toy lying on the floor. Many times our cats will bat or poke a toy we use to play with them when it's just lying on the ground. When it doesn't do anything, they just walk away since it's boring. If they see us walking towards their toys, they get excited. We bring the toys to life for them!

The way cats would play with other cats is stuff we don't want to encourage with people - ambushing, pouncing, often with some level of claw and tooth which wouldn't be enough to hurt a cat, but for us measly humans, it can be quite painful and quite a nuisance. We definitely don't want to teach them that hands or feet are fair game for games like that so whenever possible, playing with an extension of yourself through a shoe string, wand toy, paper, straw, balls, etc., it teaches cats that these are appropriate play things rather than using our own bodies.