To ask how you play with your cat

[Cheeseandlobster]

My lovely rescue boy is an indoor cat with a catio. However he is getting a bit tubby. He has a tunnel, foil things, mice, bell balls,a cat tree and toilet roll tubes. We play with him with a laser pen, bubbles and his favourite thing which is a back scratcher with a shoe lace attached. But it's not enough and running a shoe lace around gets a bit boring sometimes.

So what do you do to exercise your cat? I would love some new ideas please 😊

Put it on a lead and take it for a walk?

I would love to but he doesn't tolerate bring picked up at all so it would worry me if we encountered a greyhound or another animal that might pose a danger to him.

Another cat 😉

I don’t have the knack but my husband and son did when we had our kitty. They had this long fishing pole-like thing with feathers on the end and would kind of “whip” it back and forth and she’d run around trying to tackle it. When I did it it was very lame and send give me a wtf look but they would “snap’ their wrist with the pole and make very jerky movements with it and she’d love it!

Feathers on the end of a string and stick. Scratching the sheets and bobbing hand under the duvet, throwing Dreamies to encourage movement, moving too suddenly towards her or away from her, making too much noise, looking at her - all cause her to skit!

Our cat loves his catnip squirrel and a teaser like this.

He likes teasers best, combined with a tunnel, getting the longer toys through the tunnel and then pulling them back is good, or selling then up over the sofa and back down to the floor.

I think laser toys can be frustrating because there's nothing to catch.

I got 2 litter mates - they chase each other around the house for hours!

My cat is obsessed with these and had been since kittenhood (he's now 5)

www.amazon.co.uk/KINGQ-Tinsel-Pompoms-Balls-Multicolor/dp/B01561YQUW

He bats them.around the floor and runs after them. There are bajillions of them under our sofa 😂

I’m convinced ours likes a bit of role play. She’ll be chasing teaser type things around then, start pretending to chase other things around, or be chased by invisible things. She does this sideways hop with an arched back like she is defending herself but we are sat still just watching her antics.

Two other cats!

My cat used to love playing fetch with a ball of tin foil

now he is old he will occasionally play

DC loves conkers. We leave them upstairs, and she knocks them to the stairs, and chases them down.
Feathers between the banisters of the stairs, and soft balls chucked up the stairs. I roll up old socks for this.

Along with this teaser

Cut down on his food. Try raw feeding him - meat, bones and liver

Cat tv

You could hide dry food in newspaper so that your cat has to hunt and work for it (get rid of the bowl and only give as much as your cat would have at his mealtime).

You can get toys that clip onto door frames and swing like pendulums mine used to love this one!

Our cat also plays fetch with tin foil balls. I throw them up the stairs and she runs up and down. Terry’s Chocolate Orange wrappers make the perfect sized ball 😉

It sounds like you need to reduce his food intake as well as the first step. Our cat doesn't go out as much as she used to, so I have pruned her meals back a little. She maintains her weight on one pouch or small can split into two (mouse-sized) wet meals and around 30 grams of dry kibble daily. If you give treats you could hide them around in cardboard tubes and the like, so he has to hunt for them.

A tall cat tree with lots of platforms that he can climb might work too.

At the moment our cat's water supply - my erstwhile bedside water glass - is upstairs so if she's downstairs and thirsty she has to go upstairs. (She won't drink out of anything else, I'm not being mean to her!)

Cat tv is why we needed a new TV - the cat would come in howling for his YouTube playlist of mice and birds to be put on the telly. One day he threw himself at the telly and knocked it onto the floor. Arsehole. Still screams at the telly on the off chance we forget and put his programmes on

Pipecleaners, rolled balls of foil, ping pong balls are all good. Especially if put on the stairs or somewhere they can roleplay.

I don't play with him. He makes his own entertainment by trying to kill me several times a day by lying on the stairs, jumping out at me from behind doors, curtains and from atop the wardrobe. When he is not doing this he tries to make me self conscious by staring at me constantly with a look of horror/disgust on his face.

Still, I buy him toys in the hope that, one day, he will give up these frankly worrying habits and act like a normal cat. He's a bastard but I love him. God knows why.

Is it an indoor cat? Mine used to run around the garden. Never deliberately exercised them 😂😂😂😂😂😂

I don't. I do have 2 cats so maybe it's not too cruel, they have each other.

Mine is the ‘only queen of the castle’ type so other cats aren’t an option, but she loves to chase and attack string. I have a variety of home made string toys for her. She has no interest in bought cat toys, but give her a shoelace or my hoodie string and she’s all over it.

Mine used to play 'fetch' with balls of foil.

Some great ideas here. I think reducing his food might help too. He has one pouch of wet food and kibble. He doesn't seem to eat a huge amount of kibble but perhaps I have underestimated this

Ours used to like to chase a marble around the kitchen floor.