Becky
Orphaned cats and their perplexing toys
by Becky - January 17, 2008 - 10:46 PM

wI’m going to go ahead and use of my personal quota (1) of cat posts. First off, this post is much indebted to Higgins’ classic borrowed cat post. Secondly, I’m not a cat person. Cats are far too human, i.e. moody, for me to pursue them in addition to human companions. Cats sense this about me, and thus we tolerate each other; perhaps occasionally (some stormy night after a glass too many of Chambord), you’ll find us curled up on the couch together: me guilty, watchful, the cat practically rolling its eyes. So that’s my deal with cats.

That said, last spring my roommate and I offered to take in, for a brief though unspecified amount of time, the very personable cat of some friends who were moving cross-country. It’s not that we never heard from them again, exactly, but let’s just say they were veritably reabsorbed into the happy, protean world of pre-cat-ownership.

I saw them once, months later, in their new city, and when I broached the “so um when are you going to be picking up your cat?” question, one of them went mute and began strumming his guitar, and the other hyperventilated through choked-back tears. We just want what’s best for…[redacted]. They wanted what’s best for the cat.

ewNeedless to say, he’s still with us. It’ll be a year this spring. So to make the best of it, my roommate and I sometimes construct a little Feline Six Flags for him, and sometimes we just place him in appetizer bowls (pictured).

He tolerates and even indulges most efforts to engage him in folly, but what he loves most of all is a good combat session with a NAIL FILE. Yes, a nail file. The bigger the better. He greets nail files the way humans greet a nice fat IRS refund. He cannot get enough of the thing–he’d at once like to be filed by it, demolish it, make love to it, devour it, and in any other way experience & exploit its essence. So that’s my cat post. And now, ineluctably, I’m going to ask you fine people: is he deranged? is he special? was he a nail technician in a past life? Do your cats eschew all the goodly toys of the manufactured-just-for-cats world and obsess over human vanity tools? (And alternately, you know, have people ever left you–as in, really left you–with their pets?)

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Comments (63)

  1. I believe in reincarnation and it’s obvious a Korean woman’s soul dwells within that feline.

    posted by Peter on 1-18-2008 at 1:50 am

  2. omg! my cat is the same way with nail files. i’m lucky if i can keep one for more than a week before he finds it.

    posted by eliselag on 1-18-2008 at 1:52 am

  3. i had a cat once. it’s name was Clone IX. it’s an anagram for something else and it had a brother, Clone XI (anagram for same), and while they didn’t have any relation to the more popular instantiations of 9 and 11, one of them did die (XI) and the other, mine, was heavily perturbed by such tragedy and let’s say we never really got along so I left town and gave her to a friend and said I’d be back in a few months and, yeah, i have no intention of going back.

    posted by eeyore on 1-18-2008 at 2:17 am

  4. I have a cat named Prader, as in Prader-Willi syndrome. She has a very small stature, will eat anything and everything she sees, and can’t seem to learn anything. I too am not a cat person but acquired her through a similar foster situation. She won’t play with a single cat toy, instead preferring to spend her time nuzzling anything from the corner of the couch to my laptop.

    posted by Cassandra on 1-18-2008 at 7:03 am

  5. One of my pair of felines is very vain about her claws. She likes to play with an emery board and won’t allow me to trim her needle-sharp claws.

    posted by JohnL on 1-18-2008 at 7:20 am

  6. My husband and I have four (!) cats. Cat toys, it seems, are not nearly as fun as the following:

    1) the ring you pull off gallon milk jugs to open them.
    2) the rocks in the big potted Asian lime tree. Many of these find their way out of the pot and onto the kitchen floor.
    3) pens and pencils, preferably while being used.

    posted by lleachie on 1-18-2008 at 7:30 am

  7. My cat loves emery boards also. For a moment I thought you were talking about my cat.

    posted by Mimi on 1-18-2008 at 7:51 am

  8. Oh yes, I had a cat once who coveted and collected milk rings!

    I once thought I was a pet killer. Oh, MY cats are fine, but there were four instances in a row (over several years) when people went on vacation and left their pet with me, only to have the animal DIE before they returned. In retrospect, I realize that they were all on their last legs. People hire the kid next door to take care of a normal pet while they are away, but seek ME out for the ones who need injections or medicine or TLC because they are dying.

    posted by Miss Cellania on 1-18-2008 at 7:55 am

  9. I have three cats and the three of them only play with cat toys on occasion.

    For them, the best thing is when we get fast food and bring it home…we eat our food and they steal the straws from the cups. We hear this icy crash and then that stupid squeak of the straw as it’s removed from the cup and then the flash of grey as the cat carries its prey to the bathroom for a combat session ending with the straw escaping under the washing machine.

    posted by Amauriel on 1-18-2008 at 7:57 am

  10. I’ve pretty much quit buying cat toys. My older cat likes nothing better than rustling in tissue paper (I have to hide gift bags after I prepare them), and my younger cat is obsessed with the thick plastic straps that are used to bind boxes together for shipping. Boxes in general are great toys, too; cats love to be in something that is cozy and has walls.

    posted by Kimberly on 1-18-2008 at 8:11 am

  11. I’ve never met a cat that liked a “cat toy” – I have one that’s obsessed with plastic of various sorts, the crunchier the better. He slobbers, chews, palms it, you name it. I had a cat that went crazy for Ben-Gay, and another that loved straws.

    posted by Jillian W on 1-18-2008 at 8:18 am

  12. I have 2 – an older “granny” cat who doesn’t do much but sleep any more, and her “sibling” Roger, 2 yrs old. He LOVES milk jug rings and will play with them for hours. I moved the loveseat to vacuum under it recently and found more than a dozen under there. Boy was he happy!

    posted by Pam on 1-18-2008 at 8:22 am

  13. Oh, forgot to mention both of my cats love nail files too. I though they were just weird….

    posted by pam on 1-18-2008 at 8:24 am

  14. I have had five cats over the years and the one thing that I have learned is that the more you spend on cat toys for them, the more disinterest they have in them.

    Some of their favorite toys have been, crumpled up paper, a brown paper bag, any cardboard box big enough to hold them, the elastic bands women use in their hair and a red rubber ball off of a paddle ball.

    posted by Joseph on 1-18-2008 at 8:24 am

  15. Naw, your cat sounds “normal” to me.

    posted by paperback writer on 1-18-2008 at 8:25 am

  16. yeah, there’s really no reason to buy a cat a toy – they’re just gonna play with the box it came in and not even look twice at the toy…we have 3 cats – Tyee plays with Q-Tips, and will sit in front of the closet they’re stored in until someone gets him a new one. Calvin plays with a white string and twisted up pipe cleaners.. K.C. plays with anything that is microscopically small – making her look somewhat crazy bouncing around the room playing with what you think is an invisible toy, until you take a closer look and find it’s a tiny piece of paper that came off a spiral bound notebook

    :)

    posted by Clotho on 1-18-2008 at 8:25 am

  17. I had a cat (may she rest in peace) who had an obsession with the smell of adhesive and photographs. If a roll of scotch tape got left lying around, Shadow would find it and, after sniffing it for a while, start chewing. I’d usually find her with a few feet of tape pulled from the roll, wrapped around her a few times, and the plastic dispenser hanging from her chin. She’d always have this really bizarre look in her eyes.

    Same thing with photos that got left out…she’d sniff, lick, and chew the edges of them, and then look up with that same deranged look in her eyes.

    My current cat goes insane over the kitty laser. (Standard laser pointer, only with a housing shaped like a mouse to be suitable for cat use.) We have a riot of a time putting the laser “under the rug” (running the light up to the edge of a rug and then turning it off.) He’ll sit there forever staring at the rug waiting for the little red dot to come back out.

    posted by bre on 1-18-2008 at 8:29 am

  18. One of my cats likes to play with my wife’s hair ties. The cat will stick her head in my wifes purse to find a hair tie. One day the cat was carrying around a plastic funnel from the kitchen.

    I can get the other cat to play with store bought cat toys. She likes the fur covered mice, she’ll play fetch with it, when she feels like it.

    posted by Willie on 1-18-2008 at 8:45 am

  19. I had a cat that mercilessly defended our home from twist-ties. He would assault them viciously and repeatedly before drowning the poor lengths of wire in his water bowl. We would discover the bloated corpses at the bottom of his bowl nearly every morning. Frankly, I don’t know where he kept finding the things.

    posted by 8rustystaples on 1-18-2008 at 8:52 am

  20. My cat is obsessed with bottle caps. If you set it down for an instant, it’s gone. He’ll grab it in his teeth and tear off down the hall, drop it, and then bat it against the walls over and over again until the thing disappears under the dryer, a couch, the entertainment center, or whatever. He grabbed one out of my hands once, right as I was trying to screw the thing back on a bottle of Coke.
    —

    Also, I’m not sure if people do this on purpose or not, but I’ve found an unlikely amount of puppies in my yard over the course of two years. Of course, I take them in and find homes for them, but I would rather not be the unwanted-puppy dumping ground. My older dog is terrified of them.

    posted by bryn on 1-18-2008 at 8:52 am

  21. My cat thinks he is a dog. He used to carry his food bowls around the house until my husband mounted them to a plank of wood.

    His favorite toy, dubbed his “baby”, is a rabbit’s foot looking wad of fuzz with a bell hanging from a strip of elastic attached to a plastic fishing pole looking thing. He will stretch it out on the floor, lay on top of it, then pull the “foot” across his body so that when he stands up, his “baby” will be draped across his back. He then struts around the house, twisting his hips and stretching his legs. This is usually his celebratory “someone’s awake” or “someone has come home” ritual.

    He has also discovered that there are peppermints in the bottom of the takeout bags. We thought at first that he was just playing in the bag. We then realized he was after the mint. He picks it up in his mouth by the twisted plastic wrapper and jets off to the kitchen to bat it around on the floor. You can take it and toss it on the carpet, and he will retrieve it, oh so carefully by the twisted end, and bring it back to the linoleum. So, we probably have 4 pounds of peppermint under our fridge.

    posted by Pearl on 1-18-2008 at 9:07 am

  22. Cats are just crazy like that. One of my friends got 2 kittens recently. He was all excited and bought about $150 worth of cat toys and scratching posts and what not and the damn things sharpen their claws on his couches and play with an old paintbrush. Its just a cat thing.

    posted by Marta on 1-18-2008 at 9:21 am

  23. Love this post — I have two cats from the same litter — one of them LOVES water (waits outside the shower every morning for me to step out and then races in to sit in the puddles and stare/lick at the water dripping from the walls) and the other has a major obsession with small wooden paintbrushes and the crackly plastic bag that raw spinach comes in. They also love the laser light but alas, the only one who loves the kitty toys is the dog, who gnaws them into oblivion unless I notice and take them away from him. I’ll have to haul out an emery board and let the cats have a go at it.

    posted by Wendy on 1-18-2008 at 9:34 am

  24. my cat is currently infatuated with the little puffballs you get from craft stores. she chases them around like crazy (and bear in mind, she is a 14.5 year old fatcat). my parents’ cats also love the rings from milk jugs, and i discovered over christmas that one of them has a fondness for walnuts.

    like most people said, they’re cats: they’re not expected to make sense.

    posted by Heather on 1-18-2008 at 9:38 am

  25. My cat Buffy (I didn’t name her that, I swear) simply cannot get enough of curling ribbon. I’ve given up trying to wrap presents with it–she’ll grab the roll and run away every time I set it down.

    The only toy she’s absolutely sure to play with each and every time is those little green plastic army men. She just loves swatting them around. Regular kitty toys? Feh. So boring.

    posted by Susan on 1-18-2008 at 9:40 am

  26. My cat (adopted from a relative who didn’t want her any more) is totally anti-social. Hates pretty much everyone. Totally ignores me when I’m around. However, as soon as I leave her alone with the Sig Other, she sits near him and meows at him.

    The only cat toys she’ll play with are the ones made of real rabbit fur. But she absolutely loves rubber bands and those little plastic fasteners that hold price tags on clothes. She also has a racquetball ball that she loves to bat around.

    But her favorite thing to do is harass the dog (he’s a little guy) and then jump up high where he can’t reach her, so he goes crazy and barks at her.

    posted by frumpiefox on 1-18-2008 at 9:53 am

  27. Our two cats came to us not because some left them with us, but because someone assumed the clerk was right when he said it was a boy cat. They never had the cat fixed, so when the “boy” cat had kittens, we “got” two of them.

    Anyway, one of them, Tom Servo, likes Polly Pocket rubber dresses. He will play fetch with them–we through the little dress down the hall, he scampers after it, and brings it back to be thrown again. If pressed, he will play with feathers, but he much prefers Polly Pocket’s wardrobe. He even steals the clothing from the toy box and hides the rubber garments under the couch, then he spends hours trying to retrieve them.

    posted by SaraLuna on 1-18-2008 at 9:58 am

  28. I’ve got two cats, and they’ve both got their serious weirdnesses.

    My fat cat loves plastic shopping bags. I mean, swoons for them. I keep one on the floor for her at all times. She licks them. and not just licks them, but won’t stop until every single square inch of the bag has been properly licked. I’ve seen her lick her way around a garbage can lined with a plastic bag. once she’s licked the bag, she’ll lay on it and rub on it like it’s the best thing on the face of the earth. And woe for me if I ever bring something home in a plastic bag and accidentally leave the bag in my bedroom. At 3 am, I’ll wake up to the rustling sound of the licking, and there’s no way to stop it.

    My other cat is shy around strangers but a total freakazoid around me. He plays catch with scraps of balled up paper, bring it back time and time again. Another big fan of milk jug rings here. Oh, and when I changed the battery in my smoke detector, I discovered his latest love: 9 volt batteries. He’s batted that thing all around the house, and I found it on my pillow last night, present like the head of a proudly caught mouse.

    posted by Jenny on 1-18-2008 at 10:08 am

  29. My car is obsessed with three things: the toilet flushing, the parakeet, and gift-wrapping ribbon. Wrapping gifts for Christmas was a chore. Since the parakeet was a Christms gift, that was a double chore. I even got a blog post out of it!

    posted by Miss Cellania on 1-18-2008 at 10:32 am

  30. My cat LOVES q-tips … she’s always trying to dig them out of the bathroom trashcan, so I end up giving her clean ones to play with all the time and she couldn’t be happier.

    She does like some cat toys (especially anything made out of real fur or those little foam balls), but she hides her favorites and seems to forget where she put them. Every once in a while I go and gather a couple from under the stove and under the couch and it’s like Christmas all over again ;)

    posted by Erin on 1-18-2008 at 10:36 am

  31. I have three cats all with their different foibles. One just goes crazy over cotton balls. They are kept in a closet, when I open the door he will stand there and meow until I give him a cotton ball. Then the madness begins. I find them eventually under couches, chairs, cabinets…

    posted by Aileen on 1-18-2008 at 10:43 am

  32. Delilah (our cat) absolutely adores mini-blinds. She chews and licks them and rubs the corner of her mouth on them. We thought it was because she likes plastic, but she likes the new aluminum mini-blinds equally well.

    She’s also really into power cords and likes to chew on them, which strikes me as rather dangerous. We gave her an old extension cord to chew on so she would stop trying to chew on the ones that are plugged in.

    posted by Becky T. on 1-18-2008 at 10:45 am

  33. My cat also loves nail files – but I’m convinced that it has something to do with the smell/taste of the filings. That boy hears me open the drawer where I keep the file (for I have learned that if I want the file to remain cat-spit free, it has to be put away) and will tear down the stairs to put his face right in my fingers as I file – sniffing and tasting. Seriously people, sometimes it gets so I can’t file my nails without bonking him in the nose!

    posted by jules on 1-18-2008 at 10:50 am

  34. Oh that is very normal for a cat! I’ve had:
    Loki – affinity for pushing *everything* small off of tables and carrying dirty socks up from the laundry.
    Hanna – she had a fuzzy ball she would play catch with. If she wanted to play she would carry said ball in her mouth and walk around the house chirping until we got the point.
    Kiki – He loves the long hose for the central vac. Its his “girlfriend…” He also tries to chase the balls down the pool table, after you’ve sunk a shot.

    posted by kitsana_d on 1-18-2008 at 10:51 am

  35. I have had cats pretty much all my life and every one has been different.

    My current cat Ripley loves the little fur lined mice (she likes to play fetch with them constantly) and thats about it. Everyonce in a while you’ll find her playing with lint and fuzzy things on the floor. She only gets 3 mice – and I’m constantly fishing them out from under furniture – where she promptly looses them again. when I can’t find any of them then I’ll give her a brand new one – and she promptly chews the leather tail off of it.

    A previous cat – Cindy – hated and I mean hated cloth covered hangers. If she saw one you thought the cat was dying from all the noise she was making while attacking the thing. We learned really quick to keep them out of her reach or if you wanted to torment her you chased her around the house with them.

    KeKe would play with anything you left out laying around – pens, hair bands, paper, saftey pins, milk rings, barbie shoes, feathers, string, the kitchen rug. And then she would sit on it. So if you were looking for something you first looked under the cat as she probably had it. The most fun was when she would stick her arm under the door and wait for you to play with her.

    I have found cats like to play with really really small things, ie: barbie shoes, lint, dust balls, foil scraps. So they look like they are playing with nothing until you get close to them to see what they actually have. And then you take it away because they are not supposed to have that.

    posted by Beth on 1-18-2008 at 11:05 am

  36. My cat, Jazz, is obsessed with small rubber & plastic items. Rubber bands, plumbing o-rings & little toy lizards are high on her list, but — I swear, I don’t mean to be inappropriate here, but — a friend came over one time with a studded rubber cock-ring that she had gotten in one of those silly gas station restroom machines, and needless to say Jazz was in love. My cat’s favorite toy of all time is a cock-ring. Huh, who woulda thot?

    posted by Amy on 1-18-2008 at 11:08 am

  37. I had 2 cats dropped on me. The first one I agreed to (I still have him and love him tons) but the second one came about a week later when my frend lost his apartment and had to bring me my cats sister, (or so we thought she was, they were found in the same dumpster). Unfortunately she would not stop attacking my cat whom I had just brought back from the vet, so I had to get rid of her. My cat hates human food and will only play with one type of toy. He likes the soft balls you can throw that don’t hurt his teeth so he cann play fetch, which he loves to play to absoloutely no end. He’ll back up and do a little backflip and catch the ball, its cute, for about an hour or so, then I have to hide the ball. He also likes beer boxes a lot

    posted by Dany on 1-18-2008 at 11:27 am

  38. Your cat is normal – as normal as a cat can be, anyway.

    Only one of my cats will play with store-bought cat toys. Holstein (he’s black & white like the cow) will play with fake mice. He’s killed a couple of them and left one in his water bowl. That was disturbing.

    Stoner (named for Stonewall Jackson because he’s gray, but he’s such a dumbass I call him Stoner) will not go near cat toys and glares at me when I try to entice him with them. He will, however, chew on my nail files and push buttons on my remote controls –when he’s not sleeping on MY pillows.

    Neither of them like catnip, although I had a cat that did.

    posted by Melodye on 1-18-2008 at 11:31 am

  39. I’ve lived with three cats in the last two years. Two of them have been the most delightful, chillaxed cats you’ve ever seen. One of them (the one I currently live with) is the spawn of satan.

    The first cat, Tux, was my roomate’s cat who we adopted. He was totally adorable, and LOVED my squishy blue comforter on my bed. I’d lint roll the thing, come home, and there would be a fresh covering of black kitty hair all over the bed. Tux also looooved bells. and chasing things randomly. You would walk down the stairs and he would just be darting around the house like a little black streak. He loved playing chase. Then Kat got married and couldn’t keep him at her apartment with a No Cat policy and we found a new home for him with a little old lady. Note — Tiger had never been declawed, and although he looooved prickling the carpet under the stairs, we never had any other problems with kitty claws.

    So then Tiger (Satan) moved in (with the new roomate). Lemme tell you about Tiger. Tiger is part Maine coon, he’s about a year old and weighs about thirty pounds. My roomate had him front-declawed… really really young. So he bites and scratches really deeply with his back claws. Everything. Hands, arms, legs, faces, *CHOMP-SLASH*. He’s also stupid. He doesn’t just love plastic bags… he EATS them, and then he pukes them up, EVERYWHERE. EEEVERYWHEEEEERE. We’ll walk downstairs and find the entire first floor coated in a brand new layer of cat vomit if we so much as leave one grocery bag within kitty reach. and he loves climing into things. Once, he dived headfirst into an upright paper bag from Trader Joes and kicked around (it was on a chair about the size of the bag) trying to figure out how to get out of the bag without crashing onto the floor first. He also loves sitting in the laudry basket… and has *CLIMBED INTO THE DRYER.* … On a load of clean whites. There was almost a kitty homicide.

    Then we had Lady Jane Grey (Who I named XP XD) who found us. I heard a little mewing outside and looked out and there was this little, very very thin, grey cat. I took her a saucer of milk and she came up to me and started purring, and she had a flea collar on and was declawed in the front (but no ID tags! People! get ID tags for your cats or people won’t be able to get them back to you!), and I figured she was probably the neighbors cat who had gotten out so I took her inside… only to find out that she was not, in fact, the neighbors cat. Crap. Well, I couldn’t just put her back out in the cold, and it was so nice to have a sweet, cuddly cat in the house rather than giant-demon-spawn, so we kept her for a little while and put up annoucements and posters and stuff. But then Demon-spawn-owning roomie got irritated because the cats were fighting too much. Demon-spawn kept picking fights with Grey. She was adopted by Now-married Roomate’s mother… where she gets along fine with FIVE OTHER CATS (because they aren’t satan/posessed like our cat). *ahem* Anyway, Grey was my kind of kitty because she just relaxed around the house. She never really jumped around and played with stuff, she just kind of went about her business and let us go about ours and would cuddle with us if we were sitting on the couch.

    posted by Ashley on 1-18-2008 at 11:38 am

  40. Cats like nail files and emery boards because they remind them of their mother’s rough, scratchy tongues. Scientific fact.

    posted by airship on 1-18-2008 at 1:13 pm

  41. Erasers. I used to keep a special eraser on my desk for my cat to chew on, bat around. only thing he EVER played with. I found out years later that my brother had the same designated eraser.

    posted by Katie on 1-18-2008 at 1:48 pm

  42. It sounds like somebody needs to put together and market a bag of “Real” cat toys.

    20 Milk rings… a bag of rubber bands… A set of Hair ties… 3 balls of foil… 10 emery boards… A Roll of Ribbon… 10 pom poms… A rabbit foot… A baggie of feathers… and a laser pointer.

    posted by Megan on 1-18-2008 at 1:53 pm

  43. Um… whats better for a cat than a paper grocery bag and a piece of string? The combination of the two is like cat heaven

    posted by gabsie on 1-18-2008 at 1:55 pm

  44. I’d say that was a totally normal cat.

    Every cat I’ve owned (5 total) has LOVED running, jumping, sliding around on piles of junk mail or feeling through the pile (presumably to see if I’m also throwing away any treats). It’s all headed for the trash can, anyway, so I let them have a little fun first. Try it, it’s a blast!

    posted by Lisa on 1-18-2008 at 2:29 pm

  45. My cat likes to EAT spandex – Bathing suits cannot be left unattended at a level she can reach, or she will eat the straps and strings and such. Not gnaw on and make damp and gross – EAT – there is no more strap to be found afterwards – it is annoying because bathing suits cost a fortune these days, and also it doesn’t seem likely it is in the least a healthy snack.

    posted by mev on 1-18-2008 at 2:40 pm

  46. My cat has a huge affinity for those hard fur-covered mice as well, though she keeps losing them under the refrigerator. But her latest thing is the Orbit Sweet Mint gum in my purse. She’ll climb in, root around until she finds the gum, pull out the pieces, and rub all over them. My husband had the brilliant idea over Christmas to put some peppermint extract on a piece of paper towel and put it in one of those little catnip toys with the compartment inside. Bella went nuts for it. Guess I can’t complain – peppermint extract is pretty cheap.

    posted by Lynley on 1-18-2008 at 2:54 pm

  47. ou friend and his boyfriend would leave their change on the table and think the other grabbed it. When they went to clean their basement, they found a stash of nickels/dimes/quarters that amounted to over $20.

    posted by sarakenobi on 1-18-2008 at 3:38 pm

  48. I’m a cat person. Well, I love all animals but I feel like I have to stick up for cats since so many people hate on them. I can’t have any cats of my own for now because of where I live but I grew up with a couple. They never showed any interest in emery boards or store-bought cat toys but they absolutely adored baskets/boxes/paper bags/anything they could fit their fat butts into. Puhi, my cat that lives at home with my parents, loves sleeping on paper. Especially magazines that I’m trying to read. We enjoy putting things on him and taking pictures. Like little stuffed animals or flowers. My friend gave me a book called “Stuff on my cat” or something and it’s filled with pictures people sent in of their cats with funny stuff on them. I find it absolutely hilarious but like I said, I’m a cat person.

    posted by Leah Y. on 1-18-2008 at 4:23 pm

  49. Ha!! My cat likes nail files, too!! I think it’s because they’re light enough to push around and they have an interesting texture.

    I love cats. I relate to them in that I don’t like dealing with other people’s B.S. and I’d rather be sleeping most of the time.

    posted by Abbasmurf on 1-18-2008 at 4:43 pm

  50. Back in the days when CDs came in unopenable clamshells, my cat loved to play with the long sidestrips I’d cut off the CD packaging to get them open. He’d never tire of chasing it as we’d drag it over the floor, furniture, etc.

    Then one day we were getting our kitchen wallpapered and they left some extra clear corner protector (roughly 4-foot long). My first thought was that it looked like the world’s longest CD package side, so I showed it to our cat.

    He went nuts! I could just stand and make him run in huge circles. I could drag it along the floor completely around me by swapping hands when it went around my back. He chased it until he fell over breathing far too hard, but was still following it with his eyes.

    We finally decided he’d play until he dropped over dead if we let him, so we hid it in a closet, only to bring it out every couple of months.

    posted by Doug Nelson on 1-18-2008 at 5:13 pm

  51. My cat, Lily, loves knitting needles. she loves the needles more then then yarn. It’s the hardest thing to try and knit with a cat trying to eat the needles! have favorite store bought toy was an over the door knob hanging scratchy thing. but put it on the door and she’ll ignore it. lay it on the ground and it’s her best friend.

    My sisters cats, however, are rediculous. one of her cats loves the mice so much, he jumped up to the top of the entertainment center (6′ tall) and knocked down the basket holding all the little mice because the one he wanted to play with was in there, not on the floor. her other cat is just content to sit inside the couch. as in, crawled in underneath and and found a hole in the lining so he could sit inside the couch.

    posted by Gayle on 1-18-2008 at 5:54 pm

  52. My cat sounds pretty typical in that she plays with a lot of the non-cat toy stuff listed above (milk rings, tape, paper bags).

    However, the funniest thing about her is that she likes to come in the bathroom when I am cleaning it. She starts rolling around on the floor. I use a cleaner with bleach, and I think she’s getting a buzz off of it. I used to be concerned, but couldn’t close the door without risking damage to my own lungs. She’s been doing it for about two years now and seems ok. At least she never licks at it.

    Also, she crawls between the shower curtain and liner every morning to lick water off of the wall even though she will have a full bowl of water in the kitchen. Again, I would think that she wouldn’t like to because I use an automatic shower cleaner. At least if it kills her she will win a Darwin Award.

    posted by Jill on 1-18-2008 at 6:21 pm

  53. I have 4 cats. One of my cats loves Q-tips. Another one loves to play in the sink and bat at water droplets. I volunteer at a cat shelter and the things they get into and play with are endlessly hilarious and creative.
    Love kitties.

    posted by Lea on 1-18-2008 at 6:42 pm

  54. I have two cats, and both of them will go crazy over water bottle caps… If I’m ever unable to locate one of them, all I need to do to rouse them out of hiding it scratch a cap with my finger nail. Instantly, they’re both right at my feet.

    It took us a while to realize this obsession. My girlfriend had a bottle of coke one day, and Augusten (the more bottle-cap obsessed of the two) seemed particularly intrigued with it. We couldn’t figure it. Could he hear the carbonation? We wondered. We put the bottle under is nose, to see if the smell enticed him at all. Then my girlfriend poured some into the cap and set it on the table. Immediately, he started lightly tapping the cap. We’d already seen them both play with caps on occasion… We just didn’t realize how serious it was until then. They can be pretty stubborn about it, though. They both love to “play catch,” and are quite neurotic about it too…

    posted by Amanda on 1-18-2008 at 6:56 pm

  55. The late Mister Fluffy Cheeks liked to play with, and kill, scorpions, tarantulas and other things with venom and way too many legs. I need not point out how sorely he is missed, particularly when I’m lying in my bed, wondering what’s crawling under it. Oddly, he was claustrophobic and wouldn’t get within six feet of a bag or box.

    posted by Antinous on 1-18-2008 at 6:56 pm

  56. We have four cats. They will play with some cat toys, particularly the kind you can drag along like a snake or those furry little mice that they can stalk and bat around the kitchen. They pretty much behave as though the entire house is their playground, including the Labrador. They’ll attack boxes, bags,small insects and lizards, climb closets, etc. One cat seems to take great delight in parking himself on anything that I might be reading. Another is interested in going through all of my drawers when I accidentally leave one open. They are odd creatures, but endlessly fascinating!

    posted by FreudianSlip on 1-18-2008 at 10:19 pm

  57. my cats LOVE the ouchless brand hair ties, I’ve even caught them with their head in my purse digging one out.

    posted by jenn on 1-19-2008 at 6:47 pm

  58. My kitty, Moops, likes to drink out of glasses of water left around the house. My mother puts a dish on top of her glass to prevent the cat from drinking it. She’ll stick her head down in the glass as far as felinely possible to get to the water.
    She has a love of chewing my laptop mouse–it’s one of those retractable USB one, and she’ll chew on the casing of the USB plug if I let her.
    She also likes to torment my dog. She’ll sit behind a door and wait for him to walk by. When he does, she’ll pounce on him. He’s so good natured (and scared of her) that he never tries to get her back.
    “Under Covers” is her favorite game. Stick you hand under the sheet, and move it around, and she’ll case it for hours.
    Cat nip, milk, cat toys and string are all things she ignores.
    She does like mangoes, though.

    posted by Scriblerus on 1-19-2008 at 10:00 pm

  59. My cat Pickle also loves q-tips- and hair bands. We call her Pica, as she has a strange love of chewing unedible things- plastic bags and handles are her favourite. We don’t bother buying her cat toys as she never has any interest in them. She does, however have a little woollen monkey that she has had since a kitten- she carries him around in her mouth, and when she goes to sleep, Monkey is always in her bed with her! If i’m not paying her attention, she will try and grab whatever I am working on/reading/doing and run away with it

    posted by Blaise_ on 1-21-2008 at 8:15 am

  60. You are not alone, I have 3 cats but one in particular cannot get enough of my big nail file, no matter where I put it she finds it, that and hair elastics and barettes, can’t get enough of them! So no your cat is not the only one, she is gorgeous by the way. And as a side note, I think they are all a little deranged in their own ways.

    posted by gussie on 1-21-2008 at 9:06 am

  61. I must have the only cat on here that actually loves her cat toys and only will play with them. I’ve had many a cat before so I was prepared when I got her with a slew of milk rings, tissue paper, etc. However she only likes the little mini-cats and mice that she came to me with. She was a very shy foster cat through the ARL, but now is the most talkative animal I’ve ever met. Call me crazy, but she talks. If you say something to her, she’ll chirp in response with different intonations every time. Maybe I should set her up with that computer program that reads dog lingo, eh? Anyhow, all cats are pretty different, as are their owners. Hell, I’ve tried that appetizer bowl thing, or something like it, a few times too.. :)

    posted by Sarah on 1-22-2008 at 1:10 pm

  62. I have 2 cats (Molly and Toby) and they like to play with both store bought toys and, as I call them, “self made” toys (milk jug rings, q-tips, cotton balls, etc).

    But their most coveted item is from my boyfriend’s Haloween costume. He went as a Musketeer and had a plastic sword and the plastic “blade” broke off and it was immediately adopted by both cats. We drag one end around the room and they chase and chew and roll around with it. I’m still not sure exactly why either.

    I enjoy playing “how high can Toby climb the wall” with the laser pointer too. He learned how to jump higher when we point it on the front door by jumping up to the door handle and getting an extra vault off the door handle.

    and yes, your cat is totally normal. IF not so no normal they’re abnormal. Whee for kitties!

    posted by Lainey on 1-23-2008 at 5:58 pm

  63. I have two cats. One is obsessed with grass and ribbon (like either from a ballon or giftwrap) and also flowers. I can’t have any of these things in the house or he will eat them and then throw them up. He is an indoor cat but will try to sneak out and will eat as much grass as possible before i grab him and put him back in the house. it’s crazy!

    The other cat has a major obsession with bathing suits. whether they are new or old, clean or dirty, she will sniff them out and get them. i tried putting them in my drawers and she will open the drawer and drag it out and eat it. i have tried putting them on top shelves and she will find a way to climb up and get them, or if they are in my laundry basket she will pull them through the holes. it is really weird b/c it’s only bathing suits she does this with and can smell them a mile away.

    posted by Danielle on 4-3-2009 at 10:57 pm

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