How about one of those long wands with various attachment options, kinda
like this:
http://www.petsmart.com/global/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=8455244417
81306&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302033745&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=253437430202
3690&bmUID=1185502983841&itemNo=21&In=Cat&N=2033745&Ne=2

Have you tried a Play-n-Squeak mouse (also available in other
configurations, such an adorable hedgehog)?  There are no batteries, but the
mouse "squeaks" like a little mouse when it hits the floor, whether thrown
or batted around.  I have a couple of them plus one that is on a wand that I
can bounce along the floor.

Duffy loves the Turbo Scratcher, but that may be the toy that you said would
bore Persia.  Duffy will jump back and forth over it, batting the ball first
in one direction and then the other.  He even sleeps on the round scratcher
in the center!

MaryL

Get her a feather-on-a-stick... I thought that it would be beneath my
girls' notice so I never got them one - but when we did it was
immediately their most favourite toy on the planet. And it REALLY gets
them all moving trying to catch it (even though they're usually
extremely sedentary...) They like their cat-dancer too, and their
pompom toy, but the feather-on-a-stick is by far their favourite. (and
it's not very expensive because the toys are interchangeable so when
the feather gets wrecked you can just clip a new one on and start over
without having to replace the whole wand.)

This is the feather wand we got them...
http://www.pet-dog-cat-supply-store.com/shop/index.php?page=shop-flypage-13152#l
ongdesc

Its always hard to second guess what they will like.  All of our have loved
the round thing with the ball inside.  Until Jake figured out how to get the
ball out.  But we got years out of those.

Our best bet is still a small piece of paper or card board tied to the end
of a string being pulled by a nine year old kid.  They fall for that every
time.

That and bed mice.  Jake is determined to destroy the cotton blanket I have
on the bed right now.

No ideas other than that.

Jo

truthfully the real toy of choice here is still after over ten cats in ten
years testing it, is the turboscratcher... even Tiger the old, grumpy, never
learned to play because he was abused, will when he thinks nobody is looking
go over and bat it to see what the fuss is about, Lee...*we have 4 of them
in the house*

FWIW my boys, however old they've grown, never ever tired of interacting
with me in a game of "chase, hunt & kill the ultralong mousie tail" -
otherwise known as "string".

A five-foot length trailed around behind you, whizzed from side the side,
whirled around, and so on will probably never fail to amuse & stimulate. The
interaction's quite fun for both parties too :)

HTH
gordon

Do they make toys for cats like the kong toys they make for dogs.  You put a
treat inside and they have to work to get it out.  Something of that sort
would get Persia moving, even if the treat was just a piece of kibble from
her normal ration.

Jo

 I've heard a lot about "cat dancers" and the like.  

Sarsi sez "You can't beat a fether onna stick"
I say "Just make sure nothing delicate or breakable is within range"

 I'm pretty sure those round things with

Mine love that but only because there's two of them to play "Kitten tennis".
Basically they sit either side of it facing each other and then one of them
will bap the ball to get it moving. The aim seems to be to get it past the
cat on the other side presumably that gets you a point but if the other cat
stops the ball then they get the point

Keeps 'em quite for hours

Lesley

Slave of the Fabulous Furballs

I think everyone here has seen pictures of the (literally) hundreds of cat
toys I have in my house.  The absolute favorite - never get tired of it - is
the plastic ring you take off of milk cartons!!!  ;>  All of them,
especially the kittens now, play with those things for hours - throwing them
up in the air, playing shuffleboard with them across the floor, they seem a
never ending source of fun!

Hugs,

CatNipped

On the home-made toy front:

twist-tie "spiders" (twist 3-5 together)

I haven't tried this, but I've seen commercial versions: take a shoe
box or other box with a lid and cut a few paw-sized holes around it,
put in a toy or two, and seal the box.

loose grapes, Q-Tips or drinking straws to bat around

Have fun!
-Caroline S.

Mine loves ping pong balls because when they hit something they go off into  
an unpredictable direction.  6 for $1 at the dollar store.

Bobble

The absolute favourite toy with all our cats, from kittenhood to
very, very old, was free (thrown out in the rubbish).  It's a few
feet of the cord that controls a certain kind of window blind - a
densely braided synthetic fibre cord with plastic beads moulded
onto it every half-inch or so (the beads act like the links on a
bicycle chain).

It needs a human on the other end.  You swing it around the cat
and it can't resist chasing it.  The beads are easy to grab but
the cord is too dense for their claws to catch in it, so they
quickly let it go and you try again.  (Except for my little Mingus,
who never quite got the idea of letting go of anything - he gripped
it like grim death between his teeth, you could gently play him
like a fish).  Our Chloe likes the challenge if you grip it by the
middle and swing both ends round her head at the same time to give
her two targets to aim at.  Others prefer to chase it along the
floor like a snake.  For such a simple object it's hours of fun,
and the first one we got lasted 15 years before we gave it away
with two of Marblecake's kittens when we rehomed them.

The other real hit, with Muriel and Zeke, was a plastic tarantula
with a jumping mechanism driven by a bulb and a few feet of air
tube.  But they destroyed it in a few weeks.

What both of these have in common is that the real toy is the human.
No passive toy is ever going be as interesting as something worked
by an owner who cares and tries to understand how the cat thinks.

Both Marblecake's litters of kittens had a great time with a thing
I got from a charity shop for 1 pound.  It's a kitten-sized tent or
Wendy house made of stiff carpeting, with no floor but a hole in the
side a few inches across.  They're all over it, inside and out, for
hours every day.  But really it's just a structure that helps them
play with each other.

==============  j-c  ======  @  ======  purr . demon . co . uk  ==============
Jack Campin:  11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/>   for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

Every cat is different, and you never know what will catch their fancy,
but my cats have their own favourite toys. Caliban lives mylar balls. He
can play with them for literally hours. Since we came home from the
island, I can't find any of them, or they have been squished flat so
they don't roll (clumsy Meowmie stepped on them), so I took a piece of
aluminium foil and scrunched it up into a ball. Caliban loves that, too.
He is playing with it now, and has been for a good long while. It has
the same propensity as mylar balls of almost moving just by looking at
it, and it's also easy to pick up and carry to a location better suited
for batting it around.

Miranda loves string. A sturdy shoe lace is the best kind of string. She
doesn't even need a human to drag it around, she does that herself. I
especially remember one time, I was working at home and Mir brought me a
string and wanted me to pull it around. When I wouldn't play with her,
she picked up the end of the string and started walking around the flat
with it, all the while looking back at the other end dragging behind
her. She walked by my chair and walked in a few circles, as if to
demonstrate how I was supposed to handle the string. She was so
incredibly cute that I didn't get any work done, since I had to watch
her playing with her string. ;)