Feline Fun Friday – How Does Your Cat Play?

If you’ve had as many cats as I have over the years, you know how different each can be. They have different petting tolerance needs and different styles of playing. Olivia does pirouettes all around the room on her back paws while playing at her felinest. And she’s good at inventing games.

Her latest one is batting paper wads and small toys off the top of her tunnel toy. We toss the paper wads on top of the tunnel and she dives inside and knocks the paper or toy off with an exuberant kick. It keeps us all entertained.

Lily loved jumping high into the air after paper wads. Max chased toys across the floor, excelling at losing them under the furniture. He’d lay looking under the fridge or… until we’d come use the “toy finder” (ruler) to dig the toy out.

Olivia used to play fetch, but I guess she must have received fan mail or heard from one of the outside cats that it is undignified for a cat to fetch a toy and bring it back. It’s the human’s job to do that. Bummer. It was so darn cute and convenient!

Olivia almost totally plays with only her own toys. We have a lot of toys belonging to former cats. Olivia does not play with them. She didn’t play with any toys until we started bringing home toys for her—toys of her own. She also got some for Christmas and she adores her own toys—some quite similar to those in the toy basket, which once belonged to Lily and Sophie and other cats.

What did Olivia play with during the interim? A toy we bought her as a homecoming gift. The first picture we saw of Olivia at the rescue shelter, she was posed next to a toy with balls in grooves she could chase. We had one like it here waiting for her when we brought her home. She also took to large bottle caps, the plastic ring around a container of oatmeal and, her favorite, a small water bottle. That bottle’s like her best friend ever. She rolls around with that in her “arms” kicking it. She loves it. Lily’s toys were all stuffed toys. I thought Olivia just didn’t like stuffed toys and that’s why she wouldn’t play with Lily’s collection of favorite toys. Oh, she would chase balls and chew sticks up and down the hallway, but shun the toys in the basket.