What inanimate objects bring your cat joy?

[violetbunny]

Our two cats seem to get joy from the oddest things (besides the usual tin of cat food being opened of course!)

BoyCat loves nothing better than to shred a roll of toilet paper. We've stopped hanging it on the actual holder in the bathroom now, otherwise he'll happily pull it from the roll, shredding it into a million tiny pieces as he goes. (He knows he's not allowed to as you can see by the guilty look on his face in the picture...)

GirlCat has a weird obsession with cotton buds. If she sees one, she'll meow at it until she can get hold of it and chew it. I've had to move where I keep them as she worked out how to open the drawer with her claws and get into the box.

What random things or objects do your cats get weirdly excited about?

The late Evencat liked to take and lick Emery boards.

Emery boards, hair ties, and ribbons. I have emery boards on the bookcase beside “my chair” and often see cat-face standing up on her hind legs to get them down. I know if I can’t find one there will be a stash down the side of the chair. She also loves to steal ornaments off the Christmas tree, then roll them up and down the hall at 3am. Can’t wait for that to start. Last year’s tree ended up completely bare of decorations at the bottom, and on the right side where she perches up on the record cases to look out of the window.

In the garden she goes nuts for anything that falls out of the air - feathers, leaves, bits of cherry blossom.

My DP told me cats like emery boards because they feel like another cat’s tongue. I didn’t believe him, but maybe there is something in that if so many like them?

Toilet paper
Cardboard of any description
Tin foil
Any small tub of something she can knock on the floor

My phone if its on charge gets batted onto the floor .
Male cat loves feathers and brings in huge magpie feathers (thankfully not with any magpies attached)
Female cat loves hairbands and knocked over the little drawers unit DD stores hers in.

She has a thing about the pantry and canters over when she hears it being opened . (Nothing in there that she'd want to eat , it's just A Locked Door that she must challenge )

The bathroom light pull and balloons. She will sit on the laundry basket in the hall and crane around the doorframe to bat the light switch. Very noisy when you're trying to sleep. She will also spend ages chasing balloons and batting them about. Despite having claws she has never burst one

Little cat's current favourite is a rubber door stop, she'll fall asleep on her back with it clutched in her paws. Our now departed old boy loved, with all his big heart, a length of pink string. Over the years it became more raggedy and frayed but he loved that pink string more than any fancy toys.

And now I'm thinking about it, I have no idea where the pink string went to after we had to let him go... hopefully he's running around with it in his mouth over the bridge!

This is a lovely thread. Each of our three cats have favourite 'toys'. One of our male cats loves 'rattle mice' and happily plays football with them and then (deliberately) hides them and yowls at us until we 'find' them for him (he has trained us well). His brother loves stingy things e.g. bootlaces with the ends removed). He likes to jump up at them, pounce on them and he will always insist on being allowed to drag them away to 'kill' them.

Our female cat loves those little bands that I tie back my hair with. She will catch them, flick them around and scuttle them around the house. She also has a different hunting style to the boys, much more stealthy e.g. hiding, crouching and pouncing. I was wondering if this is because she is quite petite and needs to make sure she can maximise surprise over strength. She also has an unhealthy obsession with chewing plastic packaging, so we have to re-cycle these items quickly.

Shreaded wheat paper !

If you scrunch it up and throw it down the hallway , she loves to run and play fetch with it a few times , before going in for the kill .

Shoe laces

Ivycat is obsessed with my dressing gown. As soon as I put it on she meows like crazy until I sit down then she jumps up and leans against my arm while massaging me with her little paws and trying to suckle on my sleeve. She will stay in this position for hours 😂

My dear departed kitty loved a plastic crown from one of my DD's princess dolls - under my supervision , of course. She was near the end of her long life and the sight of it would perk her up and bring out the kitten in her.
We have a lovely overlord now who has a passion for bits of screwed up paper. Luckily, I'm not a neat freak.

Mine came home with a pink dummy! He looked so cute with it in his mouth and would bat it about for ages! I'm pretty sure he didn't actually steal it from a baby....

My cat loves bottle lids, as soon as she hears a bottle of fizzy juice being opened she flies into the room with an expectant look on her face! A few weeks ago I moved my bed to look for something and there was about 10 lids that she must have batter under there by accident

One of mine is obsessed with sleeping in the laundry basket and comes running as soon as the bathroom door opens, pulls the lid off and settles down in all the stinky clothes

I dropped a piece of uncooked fusilli pasta on the floor the other week. She spent hours/days playing with that and ignoring her toys

Currently radiators. Baguette packets are a strong favorite too for licking. And tins of any description, they all hold tuna. Cardboard boxes. Socks. And duvets of course.

Another one mad for emery boards and hair bobbles here! Also in-ear phones and anything else dangly!
Plus at Christmas we have these little table decoration stars which I scatter around on the hearth and dining table- he's been pinching and playing with those every year for 13 years.

This is such a cute thread!

My cat likes to play a game where she sits outside the lounge window, wants us to open it slightly and wave a straw through the gap for her to try and catch. She won't play with straws any other time I've actually heard her miowing outside this window and tapping it with a paw when I'm upstairs.

DH and I call it The Drive Through game

This thread has brought me so much joy

Five pound notes! When I first had the late BigFurry, my housemate at the time would cone in from work and empty his pockets onto the coffee table. The cat would hover in the hope of snaffljng a fiver and running off to a corner to kill it!

Pencils. The kind with the rubber on the end for chewing and rubbing her face on (while I’m trying to use them obviously). But any kind for batting about on the floor. Has to be a pencil, not a pen.

Haha! @ASqueakingInTheShrubbery that's a well trained cat!
My old cat would also love an emery board, when you started filing your nails she would just up on your knee, pick it out of your hands with her mouth and give it a good chewing (untill it was totally useless) the she wasn't bothered with it. I think it was the noise she liked! She also had a massive thing for lolly pops, loved playing with one!
My current cats are much more normal, one is just obsessed with anything paper.. bags, wrapping paper, magazines ect. The other one is a massive fan of catnip, both very boring cat things to enjoy I think 😂

My new Madcats promptly commandeered one of our laundry baskets and like ripping it apart to chew. I've weaned them off cellophane sweet papers.

I'm hoping that pulling all the tissues out of the box was a temporary phase.

Pipe cleaners seem to be their thing (either curled individually or in the small tangle they dragged out of DD's crafting box).

My new Harry Potter slippers. 🙄

Is it just me who has just purchased some pipe cleaners off the back of this thread?