Was I right to take it away for now???

Well... I bought this awesome toy today.. its a toy on a string, that is connected to a plastic rod, taht has a suction cup on the end.. I can put it onto glass my cats can play with it by themselves for as long as they want..

both my cats LOVED it... but expecially aerowyn... I think she has a bell fetish

so she played with it for four hours straight.. now.. its like 70 in our house .. not all that cool.. and it was just that temp from the air conditioning on ... anyways she would play with it, jumping aorund and getting it and batting it for about 20 mins.. then lay panting for about 10 mins and start all over again.. she did this for FOUR HOURS STRAIGHT!!! Now, she is not a fat kitty, in fact she could gain a pound or two, so i was worried too much exercise might make her lose what she doesnt have, so I took it down for the night....

poor little thing has been meowing at me all night, looking up on top of the tv stand where I put her toy... so I just took it in my room and played with her a bit.. oh she loved it.. I petted her with the plastic stick part and she meowed! She loves it. and she loves to play tug o' war with it.. but then I thought.. well I dont want to stimulate her too much, so I put it away where she couldnt get it.. but now she is looking at me all forlorn and meowing like "oh wheres my toy? I want to play with it!!!" Its only been an hour since I took it off of the window.....

should I just let her have the toy or not?? It doesnt bother me (the sound) but I am worried if it wouldbe bad for her to play with it all night (which I am pretty sure she would...

aww she is so sad though, and meowing at me... I just dont want her to get overheated..

has anyone else had a cat that loved a toy so much they would play with it all day???

she is sitting on the computer thing right now (erm.. that you can put cd's floppys in.. I dont know what it si called.. ) whenever I lookat her she looksa tme and meows. and looks up to where I put the toy.. the thing is she meowed, and started panting again.. so I definitely think I was right in taking it away.. it may make her a bit sad but she will be ok in the morning.

I have had cats play for hours with a toy, then forget it just as suddenly the next day! I don't think it would matter as long as she is eating and drinking normally. Kittens have so much energy that she will burn it off somehow and it is better to be with a toy than climbing the curtains!

Yeah, just let her play with it....probably get tired of it soon enough.

I am going to say no, put it away. Not for anything other than safty. At night the air temp. outside cools which can cause the suction cup to lose its grip and it might fall off. I would hate for your cat to be playing and get the string wrapped around its neck and not be able to get out. This could possibly strangle your cat if left out with out someone awake in the house. I am not saying never put it up, but be in the room at least when its up. It only takes one time. MAybe you could put the toy and get a previous favorite and play with it for a while.

I would agree with that totally - maybe I didn't read your post properly but never leave your cat with anything that has potential to harm her! But on the energy thing I think you can let her play as long as she likes.

At no time should you leave string, or toys with strings attached to them out for your cats unsupervised. The danger really isn't choking, it is when they eat the string (and they will) and develop internal complications. Depending on what the string, ribbon twine is composed of and how much is consumed, it can even at times mean death for the cat.

Yeah I thought about the choking thing too.. I just put it away at night because they have other non string toys with jingly bells on to play with.

When Aerowyn was about five months old she almost suffocated, because my mom was stupid and wanted to buy this plastic thing to go under the christmas tree.. she played in it and got herself rolled up in it.. I didnt like the bag in the first place and was afraid that what happened would happen. Thankfully my mom was listening to her play and went to investigate when she didnt hear anything noise, and found her rolled up in the plastic..

I took it off after that...