Treats

The last blog may have made you think that cats are a violent and dangerous species nothing can be further from the truth they are loving friendly and happy creatures (most of the time). They give so much, fun laughter happiness because of this you want to treat them. Over the years we have bought various toys, treats and tit bits which have had various degrees of success. Here are a few of them



Successes


Bouncy balls are one of the successes, they are small round easy to get a paw round they bounce back when the cat aims for a vertical surface and there was no guarantee that it would bounce back in the expected direction, bliss. Even more bliss when a human stands on them and flails around, even falling over whoo hoo. Whenever buying cat toys a full health and safety report needs to be produced, a huge amount of accidents in the home are caused by toys lying in wait for the unsuspecting. The problem with bouncy balls is they get rolled under furniture and the cats cannot reach them until you move the furniture.
Another success was knitted fluffy mice. A friend knitted about 3 mice for us and they have lasted years and years, they don't roll under furniture and if you stand on them they just squash down. If we find one we throw it to the cats who catches it and runs off with its prize.
A favourite game was a round bowl with a lid that had various slots and shapes on it. In the bowl would be one or two balls, the lid would be put on and the cat could chase the ball round and round through the slots. The kittens spent hours on this till eventually they learnt how to get the lid of and get the balls out which would then be rolled under the furniture and lost. The lid has now been cracked by Toby the heavy weight and we are looking at ways of mending it and then taping the top down so they don't get the balls out as quick.
The cheapest cat toy is a cardboard box with polystyrene quavers. The cats will jump in and bury themselves in the quavers. The cats would fight over who got the box. Top cat usually wins. A favourite game is burying itself deep so any other suspecting cat climbing in gets short shrift on the rump.
Sticks with a long string and feathers on the end is a good toy as long as you allow them to catch it every so often they are happy.
One Christmas we received a battery operated hamster in a ball, which rolled around never stopping even if it got stuck in a corner it just kept running around the ball until it became unstuck. The cats would stare at it in fascination tapping it every so often in wonder. Jura loved to get it to the top of the stairs then push it off the top step and then charge hell for leather to beat it to the bottom and then chase it around downstairs.





Failures


Wind up mice do not work and as far as the cats are concerned are beneath contempt. Did the stupid human think they looked anything like the succulent rodents they were used to chasing. Balls with bells in is another one that failed miserably. What fascination could a cat have for a bell. Now if it squeaked that might be fun. We purchased a treat ball thinking this would be the greatest of fun but the cats never got the hang of it. A ball with a sliding door that treats can be loaded into then partially closed so that when the cats rolled it around treats would fall out and they could eat them. Our cats are not fans of cat treats so they would push the ball round in a desultory fashion ignoring the treats that fell out, decide that the ball didn't do anything interesting and would wander off. We will one day find a treat the cats cannot resist and may be the treat ball will rule another day.





Food


Food treats are popular but it can be a hit and miss affair. Many years ago we went on a camping trip to France and bought back with us lots of tinned fish thinking this might sooth the their cries of "where the hell have you been" when we got back. Either they were so incensed at being left in the hands of a relative for two weeks or they genuinely didn't like the fish and wouldn't touch it leaving us with several tins that haunted the back of the cupboard for several years. We have tried a variety of packaged cat treats for them as far as they are concerned we can keep them. Tuna is a sure success as long as they don't get it too often. They love the liquid in the can being squeezed out onto their dried biscuits and would wolf it down. Then the tuna could either be mixed with the tinned food or on its own. The secret to treats is not to make it too often or it becomes common and expected. Occasionally we would try a different variety of tinned fish never as good a tuna but they would give it a try.


Other treats would be human food. This is not recommended but a little bit once in a while can be allowed. We had a cat who loved ready salted crisps it wasn't often we had them but if we did he would look up at us with big eyes until we would give him a small bit. Another cat would do anything for white chocolate. One of us has an intolerance for chocolate (not that that ever stopped her eating it) so white chocolate was a good alternative. Now because the cat loved it the human would try and bring it in without the cats knowledge, there was no chance as soon as the cat could sense it in the house he would be there. Have you ever watched a human tying to ignore a cat when eating something that the cat would give up all mice for. It impossible and the human would give the cat a little bit and bolt the rest themself. A certain brand of white chocolate buttons was not allowed in the house it is a sad sight to see a human and a cat growling over a packet.


All the cats in our household learned they were not allowed on the work surfaces in the kitchen. There would be shouts and smacked noses if they did. This allowed the humans to make food on the work surface without any worries about the cats pinching it while being cooked. We used to live in a stone terraced house in Lancashire and we had the back windows open all the time in summer which were work surface height. Now our cats knew the rules but the neighbours cats didn't. On one occasion when cheese sauce was being made, a huge block of cheese had been placed at the side of the cooker. The human was called away and arrived back just in time to see the cheese block being cat handled out of the window by one of the smallest cats we ever knew. We chased outside to wrest it from her but it was too late, she had hauled this huge lump of cheese which was not that much smaller than her up over the fence and into the woods. Strangely enough we didn't see our neighbour for weeks and when we finally caught up with him he admitted that he had been hiding, she had come home with a half eaten block of cheese which he confiscated into the bin, he then stayed indoors lest an irate neighbour collared him.


As a child one of us had similar experiences with their cats. They had a mum and her kitten who would often go out exploring together on one occasion Kato the mum came in with a whole gutted trout in her mouth followed by the kitten Smokey dragging one of a similar size in with her. The fish was quickly taken off them and disposed off much to the cats disgust. Then a few days later the cats appeared again each with a sizeable steak. Again it was disposed off. Then came the knocking an unhappy neighbour came to complain that the cats had been stealing her and her husbands tea which she had been defrosting on her windowsill. Apologies were given and a suggestion that she did not defrost the food on an open windowsill. It is not known if she did this but the cats stopped bringing food home, but knowing cats they probably learnt that taking it home meant it was taken off them so still stole the food and took it somewhere to eat in safety