The Health Benefits of Playing with your Cat
Playing with your feline cat-pawdre is beneficial to both their health as well as yours! It’s important to remember that the easiest, most affordable way to keeping yourself and your mini-lion healthy is by simply playing with them! Here are a list of cat toys that your little fur (or furless) baby will ACTUALLY want to play with!
When it comes to the basics, playing with your cat simply said, eliminates boredom. As natural predators, cats naturally crave stimuli and adventure. On the other side, as naturally social beings, we as their devoted pawrents think it’s equally entertaining when they run around like mini-psycho demons trying to catch the lazer pointer.
A few other fun side effects of playing with your fur-or-furless baby include:
- Promoting exercise (theirs and yours depending on how actively you’re playing)!
- Promotes bonding (cats that play together – stay together… okay not necessarily true but I like the sound of it, plus playing with a shared toy helps familiarize a cat to another human or cat’s smell)
- Relieves stress and anxiety (unless being clawed to death, generally applicable to both parties)
Why Play is so important to your family feline
In addition to the many benefits health benefits for you and your cat, play is also desperately important when it comes to learning how to be a cat. Because as the wise Thomas O’Malley once said, “a cat’s the only cat who knows where it’s at”.
The act of play helps kittens and cats to learn basic survival skills like stalking, chasing and trapping prey. Even if your little wild animal isn’t really that wild and stays indoors, it’s critical to their mental state to give your feline family member the opportunity to express their natural instincts through play.
Fierce Predators – Inducing Prey Drive in your Feline
According to PetMD, “many behaviour problems (let alone weight gain and related physical problems) can be linked back to plain old boredom and inactivity”.
As mentioned, this is why it’s critical to complete your cat’s life with cat-astic
toys that tap into their desire to hunt… without killing the pretty songbirds outside.
Here are some cat toys that will enhance your kitty’s need to catch and kill something:
1. Cat Feather Wands:
Look for the ones with a solid tether so that you can either fling it around like a bird or scuttle it across the floor like a mouse. There are some great versions of these toys that come with multiple attachment pieces and depending on yo
ur feline’s strength, you can switch them out as you go.
2. Food Dispensing Cat Treat Toys/Puzzle Toys:
These types of toys are great because they act as both a hunting and predatory toy in all the aspects of play.
In addition, it stimulates the brain and gives your feline soul mate a chance to prevent boredom and get a snack as well!
3. Cat Toy Mice:
A very traditional yet satisfying toy for cats, these mice can come in all sizes, they can squeak they can vibrate, they can crinkle or rattle, so pick the one you cat responds to the best.
4. Cat Laser Toys:
Although laser toys generally result in the funniest videos, they are not recommended by many behaviourists and professionals. Even though laser pointers encourage hunting and stalking, they can lead to your feline getting frustrated.
5. Floppy Fish:
These are all the rage on TikTok and Instagram as being a great toy for your kitty killer. They flop with authenticity and even come a different species of fish.
Cat Toy Safety
Fun and games is not always what it’s cracked up to be. Like with all fun, you should know the limits and stay within it. When picking a toy that your little ferocious beast, make s
ure to keep your eyes out for hidden dangers.
Pay attention to whether the toy has elastic strings. These can be swallowed, get caught on teeth, strangle and/or lacerate the mouth or worse. Always supervise if giving a toy like this to your cat.
Also watch out for the size of the toy as there’s a chance you cat could swallow it.
Watch out for feathers, especially unattended cats could ingest and choke on the fluff or hurt themselves with the sharp points on the quill.
And most commonly… DIY toys such as hair elastics, dental floss, and other random stuff your cat chooses to play with instead of the toys you bought them. All these things can lead to the same consequence where the cat could ingest them, should be supervised or removed for safety.