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 😊

I line up TV remotes, pens, books, anything like that, neatly on the coffee table so he can jump up and swipe them off. That's not the only reason I do it but he thinks it is.

Playing chase. She chases me up the stairs and I chase her down, she can do that for ages. Gets a workout in for me too!

Chase him round the house, after I lie on the floor so he can bunny kick my hand. He's so hyped up after duffing me up he flies up the stairs making sure am chasing. Any games/toys that involve active participation work best as cat knows giving them full attention so it lasts longer

Mine loves treat balls that roll around the floor and have holes in to dispense the treats as it's knocked about. I make him little houses out of old cardboard boxes with holes in the side, he can play, hide and pounce from there on fishing rod toys. I also got him used to a harness and a lead and take him for a walk round the garden. He loves that.

Feed him a food for chubby cats. Less dry and more wet food. Dry food is a bit like carby junk.

A Da-Bird Toy or Flying Frenzy my cats love them, they leap turn and twist trying to catch them, as does one of my dogs, but she steam rollers the cats so we only play with them when she isn't about.

I have 2 so they chase each other round the house, play fight, groom each other and eat each other's food. They also go outdoors. Neither of them have ever been interested in toys but they do love a good cable. The more expensive the more they like to swipe at it.

My boy loves playing hunt the glasses. I take my reading glasses off and put them somewhere safe like on a table, worktop or wherever. He notices I'm not wearing them and hunts until he finds them. Then he sits beside them, staring hard at me. He waits until I'm just about to say 'NO' and then swipes them onto the floor with his paw. If I ignore him, he growls at them!

Cans you get a ‘kong’ for cats, like the ones for dogs, where you hide some treats in it and he has to work out where to find the treats? That might be fun for him.

Chess. She’s nailed the Queen’s Gambit.

I look at mine and they bite me.

Please don't use the laser pen, I know they're sold for cats but a lot of dangerous stuff is sold for animals that shouldn't be used.

They can absolutely fuck a cat up mentally and trigger neurological issues - one reason is that they heighten a cats hunting skills/reaction times and sharpen their awareness of movement in their peripheral vision, but theres nothing to catch - each time they try and fail (and each time they will fail because.. there's nothing there) it pushes their brains to sharpen up and get better... constantly improving at a game they will never win, which is incredibly frustrating and constant frustration with no outlet is bad for anyones brain!

Swap it for food filled toys that utilise the catch-kill-dismember-consume parts of the hunting sequence rather than just the eye-stalk-chase-pounce parts.

A simple one is one of those little juice bottles washed out, lid off for a beginner and food in it - kitty knocks it about, food falls out, great... so now put it inside a small sock, a kids sock... use higher value food for a bit so it smells strong and cat is drive to grab the sock and kick and pull to get the sock off the bottle and then the food out of the bottle..

Once that's easy, you can put the lid on, but put some small holes in the bottle so its harder to get food from the bottle.

Work your way up slowly or it will be too hard and your cat will give up.

Another easy one is food in twists of newspaper, teach him to trash those to get the food then start hiding them, work your way up again from easy (in plain sight) to harder (still in view but now he has to climb), to actually hidden. This keeps him moving and looking to find food and fulfills his desire to seek, hunt, sniff and dismember!

Cardboard box. Cut some holes either side and then poke stuff through.

Like humans, diet is the main thing for weight loss for cats. Check on the packet how much dry food the cat should be having for its ideal weight and only put that out.

Mine likes to play fetch. Hair ties, puff balls, small stuffed animals, crocs (yes, the shoes). Her favorite spot to play is our bed.. im not sure why, but maybe because she can run and get a good leap off the bed. Sometimes she will drop a toy or shoe on my face to wake me up because she wants a game.

My cat loves sweetcorn kernals. They are his favourite treat. He will chase after them and gobble them up - I call them cat crack. And a can of sweetcorn is cheap!

I have a tubby, okay fat cat. She's lazy and loves her food.

Unfortunately she doesn't have a big play drive but after lots of $ spent on toys we've settled on a ribbon on a stick, cardboard and canvas bags. She loves to run and slide on the bags and cardboard.

I haven’t played with my cat since he was a kitten, he does go outside though.

Feed him less.

One of my cats runs on a cat wheel. Loves it. The other cat just watches.

Ours love the teaser style of toys that look like a fishing rod. Definitely worth getting the kind where you can detach and swap out the toy on the end, as it helps keep them interested. Mine love either feathers or curling ribbon tied to the end.

They also love the long sticks you can get with feathers at the end, we spend hours make them poke out from under a mat then retreat like its an animal hiding. They happily pounce away at it.

Our youngest cat loves little toy mice, the smaller the better. We found one on a string that hooks onto the door frame and dangles down and she loves it. Plays with it for ages! Ditto about playing fetch down the stairs but she tends to entertain herself doing that at approx 2am.
The older cat isn't much for playing, but fishing rod style things with mice or feathers on the end are the things that get him going the most.
As someone already said, lasers can put the cat on edge as they don't satisfy the kill/eat part of hunting so if we do use it we usually drop one or two dreamies down so they feel like they got something out if it.

Someone said to cut back on dry food and increase wet food, I find the opposite to be honest I find wet food is generally higher in calories and adds more weight. Ours are fed pretty much exclusively on dry food, our older cat was a rescue and needed literally half his teeth out from eating only wet food!

Put his dry food in one of the balls with holes in so he has to work a bit for it. My old boy was quite greedy and lazy, but he’d happily nudge his ball around for hours, and the activity did help keep his weight down a bit.

I thought he would enjoy being chased so as suggested, I tried it. He just sat under the table with a wtf expression 🤣 I will try some of the other ideas instead

Slightly wishing my cat would be this chilled out, she's demanded 3 hours of play today 😂