Yeah, we can skip them, but I just have to tell you all that Miranda
discovered the fun of drinking straws the other day! I'd read here that
so many cats like them, and I had a used one that I was going to bin,
but then Miranda came sauntering by and I decided to try it. She loved
it! She batted it around (she doesn't often bat toys around), carried it
in her mouth, and we played fetch too.

Otherwise, Mir-mir has a string fetish. She loves all kinds of string.
There's a shoelace that's very old and ratty by now that she fetches
every morning when I go visit the porcelain throne, and I'm supposed to
pull it along the floor and toss it for her to fetch. If Miranda is
hiding out somewhere (not uncommon), a string is a foolproof way to get
her to come out. In the evenings, she often appears by my chair with the
string, drops it on the floor by my feet, and paws it to say, 'make it
move, Meowmie!'

Caliban loves his crinkly mylar ball(s). There are at least five of them
kicking around, most of them hiding under furniture where I have to
excavate them for him. He can play with one of hose for literally hours
- it's so cool how they run away just when your paw hits them, and when
he catches one, he proudly carries it around the flat - then, oops! - it
gets away again and the hunt is on.

Both sometimes play with one of their soft toys - mousies, rats, a
squirrel, a lamb, a rabbit - but they're not the favourites that string
is for Miranda and crinkly balls are for Caliban.

Oh, and does the new cat tree count? They love scaling the poles up and
down, wrestling on the balcony, or just lounging in the nest.

The girls all ADORE balls, especially ones that are crinkly or soft or
fabricy so that they're easy to pick up and carry around the
apartment. They also adore golfballs, probably because of the noise
they make rolling and bouncing across the tiled floors. It used to be
that they were Scouty's favourite toy and Silver wasn't strong enough
to bat them successfully, but now all three kitties have been caught
playing with them.

In the non-rolly-line, they don't much like small catnip mice or toys
- I bought them a bunch and they almost totally ignore them... but
they adore their large lambswool mice. Hold one up and dangle it by
the tail and they'll stand on their hind legs to bat at it and grab
it!

And they love their feather-on-a-stick. So much so that they've
destroyed two and we've got to buy them another one. Toys on elastic
are a disaster though... two bites and the toy is no longer dangly and
then they lose interest!

I have temporarily misplaced the laser pointer for real, but the Red
Dot Greebling was tops, for a while. Maybe by the time I find it, the
girls will have forgotten that they cannot actually catch and kill it,
and it will be fresh for them, again.  Right now, any kind of fishing
pole type toy is tops.  The girls will leap, pounce and chase the
little leather tassel at the end of the string for 45 minutes at a
time.  Which is fine with me, as I want them to get some exercise,
rather than have them turn into little Persian melons before my eyes.
When I lay down the  pole after a while, Francesca will pick up the
tassel in her mouth and drag it  back over to me, then sit there and
wait, looking up at me with very accusing eyes until her toy starts  to
play with her, again. =o)

Catnip mousies have a certain limited appeal for both kitties, as do
balls that roll and jingle.  But Nina would bypass all of those things
for one nice green plastic drinking straw from Starbucks.  (They're the
sturdiest kind I've found.) Mr. Straw leads a rough life once Nina gets
a hold of him, as she bats him around, pounces, chews on him and
carries him in her mouth from room to room. =o) When Mr. Straw gets too
chewed up, I replace it with a new one.

Of course, there are the toys that were not actually designed as such,
like paper towel rolls, and origami paper boxes and cranes.  When Izzy
and Pan were young cats, they would have tremendous games of pea hockey
on the kitchen floor with a petrified pea.

Melissa

Panic mouse. Popular with BOTH Sugar and Pearl.

Since our go out, its hard to compete birds and mice and lizards.  Mostly
they like anything that moves.  They like their feather wand and the leopard
skin "snake" but I suspect that is mostly because they like when the boys
play with them.  They do sometimes discover lost toys and have a good play
time until they lose them again.  But a scrunched up ball of foil or a bit
of paper on a string and they are perfectly happy.

If I were to buy them something, I'm quite sure they would request a lock
for Kayla's crate that only they can operate.

Jo

You forgot kibbles, the only toy that Heidi plays with
consistently.  :-)

[snippy]

My two don't seem to care about toys, even though I bought them some.  KFC
ignores them completely and Boyfie will occasionally put his paw out to claw
a pretend mowsie that looks very like a real one.
I assume from this that being able to go outside 24/7 means they don't need
toys.

Tweed

They all love the thockies.  I take old socks sew a catfish or other
type face onto them, put some nip into them then sew the end closed with
yarn so that I can open it up and add more nip upon occasion.  Qui Gun
Kit gets fanatic about his favorite thockie and will steal it from the
other cats.  It is funny watching him running down the hall with a black
thockie dragging behind him and another cat in hot pursuit.

They adore those little tiny mousies that come in packages of 6 or a
dozen.  They think that those are great fun and they are helping out by
killing the mouse infestation.

The red-eyed monster isn't as popular, as most have figured out what it
is and where it comes from, but Stoner (Qui Gun Kit) still gets excited
by it and his enthusiasm does infect the others.

String is very popular, which makes cross stitching an exercise of
ingenuity as well as peril.

Their favorite toys of all, I think, are each other.  I've been the
speedway for the kitty 500 enough times that I shouldn't be surprised
when I have new bruises the next morning.

Pam S.

Vino also has a catnip mousie with velcro on the bottom that he goes
nuts over.  But he loves it way more if I move it around for him and try
to pull it away while he's gnawing on it.  If I don't play with it with
him, he loses interest soon.
He also likes those little furry mice, he will bat those around quite a
bit and sometimes plays fetch.

We have these little word magnets on the fridge, the kind you get at bookstores
to cater to your inner poet as you go grazing in the middle of the night. Roxie,
who reigns from the fridgetop, likes to pull random words from the side to the
top. "Cat psychedelic miasma cold cigarette." I want to know what's growing in
the catnip patch.

She also has invented a new game involving a catnip bag. She will take the bag
and amack it down on the floor a couple of times, pick it up, raise it over her
head, and toss it into one of Louie's sneakers; and she'll dig it back out and
begin a new round. We believe it has potential for both physical fitness and
marketing. We're thinking of adapting it for human use and calling it
"basketball." Where does she get this stuff? I think Louie watched bits of one
or two games when it was a slow point in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and she's
picking it up just from his getting bored during commercials?

Stosh likes the plastic caps from milk bottles and toilet paper. At least I
think he still likes TP. He did a while back, stopped, and now we're finding
rolls of Cottonelle waving a white flag after being beaten into submission. The
weirdest favorite is my hair. He loves to swing on it like Tarzan, all sixteen
pounds of him.

Brandy likes to beat on my yarn, as does Stosh; she also likes to swat at the
cords for opening the curtains. Her favorite of all, though, is wrestling.

Odessa is a total niphead and spends most of her time with a nipsack.

All of our babies love ping-pong balls, and wiffle golf balls--you get them 24
to a pack in any sporting goods department and they're inexpensive, and they
make great noise when they bounce. They also have little holes in them, making
them easy for the cats to carry around and stash away. We've been wondering
where ours have disappeared to. I think someday I'll do some cleaning (yeah
right) and I'll have this mountain of wiffle golf balls fall on me like tribbles
on Captain Kirk.

Blessed be,
Baha

My two, Rhia and Amy,  are littermates and Siamese, but with different
favourites for toys. Neither of them are catnip-sensitive, which takes
some of the fun out of the standard commercial toys for them. Rhia
likes balls and anything that rolls and is the football (soccer for
those on t'other side of the pond) player. Her real passion is balls of
silver foil. She loves to carry these in her mouth to the top of the
stairs then bat them downstairs with a paw and try to run down and
catch them before they get to the bottom. She usually succeeds. She
also likes to pop them into the toes of my unworn shoes then try to
fish them out again. The first time I say her do this I thought she'd
dropped it in there by mistake and couldn't get it out, so I tipped it
out for her. She promply put it back and gave me a look the clearly
said "Don't you dare ruin my game again!"

Amy likes anything light and fluffy that she can throw. I've never seen
a cat throw like her. Sometimes it's the ususal take it in her mouth
and throw it with a flick of her head, but her favourinte technique is
to take it in her front paw, go up on her hind legs and swing her whole
body like a hammer thrower. She'll send things flying clear across the
room like this and seems to hit me with them so often that I'm sure she
must be aiming for me! Her favourites for this are some catnip mice
with leather tails that she's almost totally destroyed, regrettably I
haven't been  able to find any more of them; they were sold by the
little local Co-Op grocery shop that had a rack with a few cat and dog
toys next to the pet food. When they re-organised the store and got rid
of the rack I bought the entire stock of about half a dozen of these
before they were returned to the warehouse, but I've run out of them
now.

John (servant to Rhia and Amy)