Grr! Where are the Cat toys? No, I don't mean they are lost and I want to find them, I mean - when I go to Zellers, or WalMart, or whatever - why aren't there very many cat toys?

There are all kinds of big biscuits for dogs, chew toys, throw toys, frisbees, etc etc! But when you go down the cat isle, all you see is cans of cat food.

My poor kitties have to some how survive on imitation mice. (Although, I must admit, I'd rather they had imitation mice than real mice!) Other than that, most of their toys are make-shift. True, true, I could spend and entire pay check on a cat-scratching post.

So, what do I do instead?

Make your OWN cat scratching post. Almost two years ago, my boyfriend and I visited his father. I was bored out of my mind. Until I realized he has a full-fledged work shop! With only one piece of wood (fairly large, about 6 feet by 8 feet.) I made a "kitty castle" ... It has four sides (duh) a top and a bottom, and pieces on top, all the way around that are about the size of a sprawled out hand as those castle toppers. Oh, and two doors, front and back so they can get a good run though it. Now, we can put our stereo speakers or whatever, on the top, and they still have a little play area inside!

Make your own cat nip. True true, this was more of an experiment on my part, but I bought cat nip seeds. (I was going to buy the package, but it was about 10 times more expensive than just buying seeds in bulk!) I got an ice cream pail, some dirt from my mom's rose bed, and grew the cat grass myself. Okay, so it was nothing like cat nip, but the cats loved digging in it, and making a small mess of our apartment. But I loved seeing it. Finally they had something new to play with.

Balls!!! The one good toy, and decently priced, that I found at Walmart, was a 6 pack bag of noisy balls. Our youngest cat, about a year old, loves it when we put one of those noisy balls inside the tub! He shoots it around, kind of like that new roller-derby sport. These balls are in packages of six, and about two or three dollars. They have little balls inside the balls, and small wholes and lines around it. They also are in many different colors.

Okay, so unless some company starts to take my ideas seriously, you might want to try some of these things. You'd think that since the far majority of pets ARE cats, that there would be more toys.

(sigh.)

Good luck!



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