If you’ve had your cat since he was a kitten, you’ve probably noticed a decline in his enthusiasm for playing as he gets older. Kittens are naturally active bundles of energy, but as cats get older they often want to play less. Nevertheless, making time for playtime with your cat is still essential, no matter what age he is. Even if your cat has plenty of toys for solo play when you’re not around, we recommend putting aside 20-30 mins each day for some interactive playtime with your cat.
Why is playtime with your cat important?
Physical health
As humans we need exercise to keep us healthy, and it’s exactly the same for cats. Regular playtime with your cat provides a cardiovascular workout, helps to strengthen his muscles and keeps obesity and weight issues under control.
A channel for built up energy
You may think that your cat spends most of his time sleeping, and of course cats can spend up to twenty hours asleep every day, but think about how much energy he’s building up as he sleeps. Scheduled playtime with your cat is the perfect outlet for his excess energy, and will help produce the chemicals that help his body to cope with stress, as well as making sure he doesn’t channel his energy in more destructive ways, such as unwanted chewing or scratching behaviour.
Mental stimulation
Playtime stops your cat getting bored. While boredom on its own is bad enough (can you imagine having nothing to entertain you, all day every day?), it can also lead to depression. Yes, cats can get depressed too.
Stronger bonds
Interactive playtime with your cat is also a wonderful way of strengthening the bond between you and your cat, and between your cats if you have a multi-cat household.
DIY Cat Toys
As we all know, cats can be fickle creatures – have you ever bought the latest, greatest toy for your cat only to find that he loses interest in it after a week? I’m sure we’ve all been there, so it’s great to know that you don’t need to spend lots of money on expensive cat toys. Newsflash – your cat doesn’t care about the price of his toys! Cats like movement, noise and texture and things that encourage their natural hunting, stalking predatory behaviour.
You can make a variety of interesting cat toys using common household objects, and they won’t cost you the earth.
- Tie some string to a pole and attach something onto the end – scraps of material, feathers or even a ping pong ball. A perfect homemade fishing rod toy.
- Buttons on a string make an entertaining and enjoyable toy for your cat to bat at, especially as the buttons clash together and make lots of noise. Just make sure that the buttons are securely fastened and only use this toy during supervised playtime with your cat, to avoid the risk of your cat swallowing a button.
- If your cat goes crazy for catnip then why not try making a homemade catnip toy? All you need to is a scrap piece of fabric or felt, some needle and thread and some dried catnip to get started. You might prefer a traditional fish or mouse shape, or let your imagination guide the shape of your cat toy.
- If your cat loves to bunny-kick, then grab an old sock, some stuffing and catnip and a few needle stitches later you’ll have another tailor-made cat-friendly kicker toy.
- If you’re not confident in your crafting abilities, there are plenty of things around the house that are great for cats to play with. Cardboard boxes are always a popular choice, stack them up and cut holes in them for doors and windows. Empty toilet roll or paper towel tubes and scrunched up aluminum foil balls are also popular in our house and will give your feline friend hours of fun.
The great benefit of DIY cat toys is that if your cat isn’t impressed, you haven’t wasted any of your hard-earned dollars and you can keep going back to the drawing board until you’ve created the perfect toy to appeal to him and encourage more playtime.
Do you engage in regular playtime with your cat? What is your cat’s favourite DIY cat toy?
Great info!!! I have 2, 4 yr old kitties and a 1 yr old, and there is definitely a difference in their energy level. But they still have their bursts through the day where they tear around the house LOL!
We love to play! We may be 8 years old but we’ll turn into a kitten in no time flat when it’s play time! We love nip toys, mousies and anything on a string! We like all your ideas too!
Great ideas for play time! I do play with my kitties all the time. I experiment with making different types of toys for them. Some of those DIY toys go over well and others totally flop. My cats’ all time favorite is what I call “Milk Ring on a String” which is actually a long ribbon with a milk ring tied to the end. I drag it along on the floor behind me as I walk along and the cats chase it.
Playtime is the best! Our favorite toys are wand toys. Those DIY toys sound fun too!
Mommy makes catnip toys and we have oodles of store toys, but we like to make our own toys from found objects, like pens, corks, earrings. Then we like to store them underneath the fridge and stove. Mom does try to play with us, but some of us just don’t play. Good post…thank you.
We give empty TP rolls four paws WAY up! We looove destroying them!!
Playtime is so important for cats of all ages. The fishing pole types are big favorites here! 🙂
Ah, the important things in life. Our cats love to tear up newspaper-must be the sound.
Great post! Truffles is nuts about empty toilet paper rolls 🙂
Good advice….and good ideas for toys. We gotta get the mom to play with us more.
Very cool! When our cat hobie was around he would get foiled up aluminum balls to play with, sometimes they would tie a string to the inner core and pull them around the house for him to catch. It was a lot of fun. WOOF!
Cats are so fun to play with and mine were always easily entertained and very entertaining!
Great toy ideas! I definitely second the advice to only use the button on string toy for supervised play. I’ve seen a lot of cats that have swallowed string, which is more of a problem than the button, as it forms a ‘linear foreign body’ that can do massive damage if not removed surgically early.