my cat smudgey’s fav toy was a small piece of paper rolled up and thrown. He will chase after it, and bring it back for me to throw again and again. He even saves them up and puts them away under the bed. but after a few times the paperballs get wet and lose their effectiveness so i always make new ones.
tommy the cat would chase em but wouldnt fetch em back.
[quote]For those concerned about lack of water intake for cats eating only dry food, consider getting a cat water fountain. The Catit fountain is widely available in Taiwan. It’s not cheap, but the burbling water is much more attractive to cats than a still bowl of water. (Our older cat is extremely picky and would not drink out of his water bowl, but he loves the fountain.)
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Or you can spend a fraction of the price on a water fountain and make your own using an aquarium filter/ pump. See photo here: 
BARK has a lot of cats in foster homes and we found that the most common illness amongst cats is urinary issues due to not enough water intake. We spent $100nt per pump (as opposed to $2000+ for the Catit) and ALL the foster homes reported that the cats in their care were drinking double the amount of water.
Regarding toys: [quote]The plastic rings from milk bottles, and the caps, are good and cheap.[/quote] Agreed! I also find that ping-pong balls are a hit with all kitties and they are inexpensive. I usually keep about 4 toys out at a time, and put 4 toys away in a drawer. I do an exchange every few days so they don’t get too bored. And I keep the soft toys in a sealed bag with cat nip so when I take them out, the kitties smell the cat nip and go crazy 
Nice machine, wish I had the foresight to make me one of those.
Wow, I never thought you had to do so much for cats. My poor kitties seem to be sadly neglected. I’ve never given them a bath or brushed their teeth. I do give them the hair-ball control medicine, and they get cat-nip and cat grass too. They love to eat the grass, because it helps them throw up hairballs.
You need to be careful when buying cat toys because some of them use real rabbit fur rather than something synthetic.
My cats loved our previous rooftop too, but the problem comes in if you ever moved. It is really hard getting an outdoor cat used to being only indoors. For the first two years I took my cats for walks, but our selfish neighbours are feeding a whole bunch of stray cats. The cats have taken over the entire outside area, peeing everywhere and attacking any other cats. Now my cats can’t go outside anymore, and it is quite depressing.
Cats love cat-trees so much it would be a sin to deprive them of that. It’s not just functional for their claws, but there is nothing better than watching an upside-down cat crazily kicking a cat tree.
Be careful how you train your cat. I read this story in the Reader’s Digest about this family who would throw their cat outside every time he scratched the sofa as a kind of time-out punishment technique. For the next fifteen years, every time the cat wanted to go outside, he would walk up and scratch the sofa. Don’t know if it’s true, but it sounds so CAT.
[quote=“twonavels”]
I read this story in the Reader’s Digest [/quote]
[quote=“twonavels”]You need to be careful when buying cat toys because some of them use [strike]real[/strike] synthetic rabbit fur rather than something [strike]synthetic[/strike] real.
[/quote]
There. Fixed that for ya. 
… and even if they do use real rabbit fur, what’s so wrong with that? Rabbits come either from farms (for the meat and the fur) or wild-shot in places like Australia where every rabbit killed is a blessing.
I’d rather have my cats eat and swallow rabbit fur than plastic fibres and plastic fabric. I mean, they’ve been doing just that for millions of years.
Exactly. It’s not as if you’re feeding your cats vegetarian cat food anyway, right? They’re carnivores!
[quote=“urodacus”] The best tool to exercise them with is one of these:
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My sister’s cats spend hours sitting in front of or on their gerbil cage. You’d think it would freak out the gerbils, but they don’t seem to mind. I’d go over there and find my niece, the two dogs, and the two cats with their faces pressed up against the cage, just staring at them.
My other sister has a pet rat, also a perennial source of fascination for her cat.
An aquarium will also give them something to look at, as will a bird feeder placed somewhere where the cats can see it but not get at the birds.
Indoor cats need more entertainment options than those allowed outside.
Temporarily fostered stray kittens are a never-ending source of amusement for some of our older cats. 
How do your own cats treat the kittens? I would be afraid our family’s cats would try to kill any newcomer. We had my sister’s cat over to visit once (definitely only once!), and our cats were very aggressive and threatening.
How do your own cats treat the kittens? I would be afraid our family’s cats would try to kill any newcomer. We had my sister’s cat over to visit once (definitely only once!), and our cats were very aggressive and threatening.[/quote]
We exercise great caution in introducing new kittens to our older cats, and don’t generally let them near each other until the kittens are 4-5 weeks old or more. At that point we allow supervised contact. Two of the adults will generally run off and sulk, and one or two will sit and watch them curiously and come over to sniff them or poke them with a paw. They can watch them for hours.
We’ve fostered many kittens, so the older cats are quite used to this, and also know they’re not allowed to threaten the kittens. In the past, any time they approached kittens or hissed at them they got hit with a spray of water, so now they know to approach cautiously and in a non-aggressive manner.
They have also been conditioned to associate a snap of the fingers or a ‘no!’ with a squirt of water from a spray bottle, so we can control them pretty well even from a distance.
[quote=“jimipresley”][quote=“twonavels”]
I read this story in the Reader’s Digest [/quote]
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My parents used to have the Reader’s Digest delivered when I was a kid. I spent hours reading it, and I still remember that story. The Reader’s Digest rocks!
I still don’t like the idea of rabbit fur. I just buy those ones with long ribbons and attach new ribbons or strips of paper to the stick when the toy gets broken. Paper balls are a treat too. I don’t want them chasing furry things. I used to have hamsters and guinea pigs with the cats, and rabbits are cute. Only kill it if it’s ugly. Like a cow.