Your kittens favorite toys?

I find myself constantly trying to come up with new toys to keep Sami interested and challenged and am looking for new ideas. She gets bored with most store bought toys after a day or two. I take those away to be presented again at a later date. So far it seems that simple things like large twist ties, paper bags (which are hard to come by anymore!), toilet paper rolls, a wad of foil or waxed paper, wine corks and a box with various sized holes cut in the sides and top seem to be her favorites. Just wondered what sort of things you have found that your kitties love to play with? Any new ideas are appreciated!

Hair scrunchies and the pretty little pony tail holders with the bows on them for little girls... And don't just give them to your kitty, our kitty likes things she has to find on her own, stuff she thinks she isn't supposed to have.

Also my cats enjoy chasing bubbles on our balcony and it is relaxing for me to blow them.

A sturdy pink wand with a squirrels tail attached. Its by far the cats favorite.

It's really weird, but my kitten absolutely adores cardboard rings cut off of a paper towel tube. She'll fling them around or carry them off to her bed where she hoards them. I of course keep an eye on her so she doesn't eat the cardboard, but for now she seems to be enjoying herself.

Mooni likes anything that makes a lot of noise, which on my hard floors is not difficult to do. She likes small disposable water bottles, empty of course, knocked off the table, preferably. She likes glow-in-the-dark ping pong balls that I light up with an ultraviolet flashlight. She likes the wierd electronic squeaky mice* that come on a string and stick, and also twisted up pipe-cleaners.

What I need to do now is to cut a small board to place right under the front of the stove so most of them don't end up underneath, after a while.

I found lots of cat toys in my father's house while I was cleaning out his hoarder's nest. Plastic jingle balls, crackly mylar balls and those infernal squeaky things *I've just looked up and see they are called 'Play-n-Squeak'. It was a dark, gloomy time and I had inadvertently packed one of them in the back of the pickup close to my head and the bird-like chirping seemed macabre, on the way home...but I've gotten over it and Mooni loves it.

She also loved the crackly expandable tube I found down there, but after a couple of weeks she tired of it. Rolled up socks are fun, and my dog's plush toys are always game---great for aggression-redirection for kittens (like mine!)

Today she had fun with a tomato worm and a wood clothes pin.

In other words, just about anything that is bat-able, tossable, biteable, flingable and noisy is a good toy for a kitten.

I almost forgot one of the favorites: felted balls of cat and dog hair! When I brush my pets I sometimes keep wadding the fur up in my hand and then when I get a sizeable handful I get it damp and roll it around until it compacts a bit. When dry it makes an almost irresistible chase toy! 

Sawyer has a ton of toys, I can probably count 10 right now laying around.  Some of them I hardly see him touch though.  I bought him this double pack at TJ Maxx with a little pink mouse, and a little pink ball that is like a bow wrapped around it.  He LOVES the bow toy, I used to save it in the closet and only give it to him after we played laser pointer, so he would feel like he caught it, but now he gets it mostly all the time and he carries it around and sleeps with it.  It's so funny, it's the most plain toy he has but it's his favorite!  He even throws it into his crinkle tunnel and will jump in and attack it.  

da bird is definitely da favorite! they love any toy with feathers. pole toys and anything that dangles. the cat dancer has been played with for months and it cost a whopping $2 from chewy.com. they like their turbo scratcher that is round and has the ball that goes around the perimeter. and plain old q-tips are a favorite along with ponytail holders. and they love the laser pointers. i have a drawer full of them. they can really make a toy out of just about anything...

oh and they have a bunch of mice and pom-poms made out of real rabbit fur that they LOVE! (ebay has the best deals on those!)

My kittens favorite toy are pipe cleaners twisted up together. We have hard floors and he just goes crazy for them. He also loves this little mouse that is filled with catnip, I swear he thinks it's alive.

czygyny said:

 
I almost forgot one of the favorites: felted balls of cat and dog hair! When I brush my pets I sometimes keep wadding the fur up in my hand and then when I get a sizeable handful I get it damp and roll it around until it compacts a bit. When dry it makes an almost irresistible chase toy!

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Yep... and human hair. I shed a lot.  If I clean my brush and don't empty the trash immediately, I will come home to find human hairball on the floor.

MollyBlue said:

 
Yep... and human hair. I shed a lot.  If I clean my brush and don't empty the trash immediately, I will come home to find human hairball on the floor.

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 Yummy stuff for kitties! Used Q-tips are another fav, although I try to keep those out of reach. I generally find my dirty clothes baskets tipped over and laid in in the garage, too. Mmmmm, stinky!

Well, Jasmine isn't a kitten any more (she just thinks she is), but she enjoys fencing -- her claws against the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels.

Margret

All great ideas! If my beloved Raven (Golden/Black Lab cross) was still with me I could have tons of felted fur balls! Rings cut from the paper towel roll were a hit too. Something about the used Q-tips grosses me out, but hey, cats have their reasons. But yesterday, my brother got her a set of those colored springs and they are without a doubt her favorite toy EVER! She chases them to the point of exhaustion. I don't know how many were in the pack, but I can only find one right now. Time to go fishing under the stove and fridge.

The favorite bought toy by far is the Kick-a-roo, a long stuffed toy that they grab and kick with their back feet.  I bought them a cheaper off brand and they haven't played with it much(?) Time to bring out the big baggie filled with cat nip and let the toys 'steep' for a while in the fragrance, I do this with all the toys they lose interest in. It works! The only down side is shaking all that cat nip off so my floor doesn't look like the bottom of a chicken coop, and with cats in the house it usually does anyway! 

Haven't seen that one, but I saw a stuffed Ragdoll that looks like Sami in our book/gift store. It's kitten sized so I bought it for her and she loves it! I think she can't quite figure out why it doesn't play back though. LOL

Mine likes to start off with chasing tossed items like milk jug rings, then moves on to pouncing training with a National Geographic-branded wand toy (the "bug and mouse" version) from the local PetSmart that isn't on their web site or on Amazon, and then finishes by getting his "kill" on with a Kong Wubba octo-mouse, which he chomps down on and bunny-thumps the heck out of. He's gone through five.

I bought a "Da Bird," but the string came untied from the clasp that the feather bit attaches to. Ironically, he enjoys chasing the end of the string more than he did the feathers. The NatGeo wand toy gets him seriously wired up, though.