Best Toys for Indoor Cat

[Howmanycatsaretoomanycats]

Hi

I have to keep my cat indoors for a while. We need to fix a problem that we have with an unwelcome and unliked (cat) visitor coming into our garden. One of our cats reacts really badly to this visitor and displays redirected aggression at us and his brother if he so much as gets a whiff of it!

My cats don't roam so the garden used to be their safe space 🙁

So, what can I get for the house so he doesn't get bored while i try and make the garden like fort knox?

Thanks

A selection of boxes 😅

My cat loves fluffy balls and spirals, only thing is I find them all over the place!

I get them from Amazon

Fishing rod type toys like Da Bird. OK needs effort from you to swish it around but most cats love it.

Catnip kickers, Tobias's favorite.

Things dangling off the different levels of the cat tree.

And the cheapest - scrunched up balls of foil!

The best toy we’ve found so far is a bouncy cord with a noisy toy that you hang from a door frame. Massively, enduringly popular with our cats.

Otherwise they love stuffed toys that make a crinkly noise and have catnip in. They hug them whilst scrabbling with their back feet.

It depends how playful your cat is.
If you are getting a 'flicky' bird toy (on a wand) the Da Bird one mentioned before is far superior to others. It has a very long wand and long string to the toy and makes all the difference.
Ping pong balls, balls of foil.
I've said this before on here but you can make a cat "Kong" by making a hole in a tennis ball.
My cat likes playing with tissue paper. You can hide treats in it and they rip it up looking.

Mine has a couple of tunnels, a pop up tent, a large car tree, small fluffy mice, ping pong balls, wand toys plus me! He's recently become indoor instead of the neighborhood thug due to me moving to a flat. As you can see, he's suffering terribly...

My cat loves plastic springs.

Cardboard boxes with dreamies in them

One or two of those coated large boxy type bags (like the blue co-op ones or the Sainsbury’s one with the elephant on) sprinkled with catnip

play videos of birds on YouTube mine love this

laser beam toys

no cat toy i have every bought any of my cats alive or no longer with us over almost twenty years have ever been okayed with for more than a few minutes.

I bought these for my cats recently. They are on elastic, I hung them on the staircase banister and on a door.
my cats love them, one grabs the toy and stretches it as far as possible then lets go. The toy then pings all over the place while she runs around like a loon trying to catch it.
My male cat somehow manages to detach them and then wanders about the house holding his prey whilst making very loud and weird noises. He will eventually drop it at my feet and expect praise for catching it.

I started a similar thread a few months ago, as my rescue cat had been locked in a garage, as far as anybody can tell, for most of her youth, and did not know how to play with toys.

I got some great recommendations on here, and the change in her has been amazing - just recently she has become really playful, and started to enjoy a whole range of toys. I would recommend:

A cat tree, if you don't have one - the biggest one you have room for/can afford, with hidey holes, different platforms etc.

Good quality catnip toys - mine only reacts to ones where the catnip is strong enough for a human to smell. Yoweee ones are really good - we have the banana and the rainbow. She carries them around, brings them into bed with me at night, etc.

Little furry toy mice - again, carries them around (I usually find about 6 in the bed or on the bedroom floor when I wake up). Also throws them around for herself to 'hunt".

Enrichment "puzzle" type toys I can hide treats in - things like tracks with balls built into them, things she has to teach her paws down into etc.

She is less of a fan of the fishing rod type toys (though I will keep trying her with them occasionally, as other cats I know love them). And the cat bubbles we got her she hated - it is literally the only time I have ever heard her hiss!

@Howmanycatsaretoomanycats were experiencing exactly the same. Vet said we need to keep ours in as he’s clearly been bullied and had several injuries and he was in danger of getting a bad injury, he had a bad scratch that got infected last week.
Mines favourite toys this week are a lazer pointer (best late in the evening now) and a glove he’s stolen and runs about with.
Gutted as he loves going out and doesn’t roam far.

These were the only toy the late Cheddar would play with. I thought current cat would like them, but no. She won’t play with anything!

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. Will need to go on a shopping spree tomorrow. I’m currently tiring him out with a mouse shaped laser pointer which he loves

After reading this I remembered that I have one of these that I bought when I first got her - she seemed scared of it at the time, so I put it away. Hung it on the door frame this evening and she went mad for it!

Mollys mice - get them online - ours love them!

Just a little update. I spent a small fortune on lots of different toys and he is particularly fond of the shoe laces and gift ribbon. Well I tried 😂