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The Best Cat Game Ever
January 25th, 2008 by Christine Kane
You will need:
1 - One single wooden bead (not too small)
2 - One Bathtub
3 - One Curious Cat
Instructions:
1 - Take the wooden bead into your bathroom.
2 - Call your cat.
3 - Roll the wooden bead around in the bathtub.
4 - Allow your cat to jump into the tub.
5 - Observe.
Cautions:
- Use a wooden bead! I won’t mention any names, but a certain cat in my life was playing in the tub with a marble. In a moment of unbridled glee, the marble was thrust into the air. It landed on the aforementioned cat’s head with a loud “CLONK!” sound. He paused for a moment looking rather dizzy. Since then, he has requested that only wooden beads be used for this game. Now when they hit him on the head, there’s only a small “plock!” sound - and he doesn’t have to pause very long to recover. (He has asked me to mention that no permanent damage was done in what we both call The Marble Incident.)
- Make sure the bead is big enough so that the cat can’t swallow it. (It should be a little bit bigger than a marble.)
- If you have guests over for dinner, be sure to remove the bead from the tub. Otherwise your dinner will be interrupted by an odd rolling sound coming from the bathroom. You will then have to explain to your guests that yes, you are that mentally ill, and you actually spend valuable time coming up with these kinds of activities for your cat.
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January 25th, 2008 1:30 am
ha!! best post ever!
loved it. and such a cute kitty!
January 25th, 2008 4:46 am
Cool game - will definitely have to try this!
January 25th, 2008 7:47 am
Love the game… looking for a wooden bead right now!! P.s. should the bathtub be empty?! (just kidding!! :-))
Jessica (Kitten) had 2 favourite games currently:
1. She loves Post-it notes:
1. scrunch up a few (ideally used that you don’t want anymore - re-cycling!)
2. place a shoe or slipper in the middle of the room
3. flick the Post-it note towards the cat (preferably with some height so they jump!)
4. Kitten will catch the ball of paper and carry it in her mouth to the shoe and put it in (most times)!!
This is just a kitten game as my older cats just watch with mild annoyance because it’s keeping them awake!
2. Toy Space gun that fires flat round foam discs across the room:
We’ve just bought this from Amazon and it’s great! - Fire the discs and she chases them and catches them. This usually involves her doing the ‘wall of death’ around the sofas but it’s great to watch! She sits and meeows at us to play with her!
…Again the older cats just look on in frustration as the noise of the gun whizzing breaks up their cat napping time!!
Hmm…now where did I have some wooden beads…
January 25th, 2008 8:08 am
P.s. Glad the marble incident didn’t cause any permanent damage!
P.P.s My kitten also likes getting in the bathtub and chasing her tail!! This is okay as long as there is no water in there. She sneaked in the bathroom one day jumped and became a very wet kitty! (She wanted to say that she’s fine and didn’t require any counselling afterwards - just a big hug from her mom!)
January 25th, 2008 8:12 am
Oh, that sounds like fun. I miss not having a cat - not really fair where we are tho (appartment, now way to get outside, and we’ll be moving back to NZ later in the year)
Another good one is wrapping paper. It’s great for shreading if you happen to be lucky enough to have claws.
Here’s a pic of our (previous) cat, called either Scooter, or just Cat. We still miss the big guy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicwise/282686383/
January 25th, 2008 8:42 am
We used to live in an apartment where the door was at the end of a very short hallway. It was quite narrow. After Easter one year, my kitty took a half of one of those plastic Easter eggs and batted it around in that area. It was great! The egg would spin and hit the wall, then bounce away, or it would go up in the air and hit the wall if he hit it hard. We always had to make sure we had one of those halves around all the time after that. He’d carry around with him. Many, many hours of “pocka-pocka-pockapockapocka-POCK!-pocka”. We don’t have a similar hallway here - I never thought about the tub! Need to find a plastic egg and give it a go.
January 25th, 2008 8:42 am
For the cat, I mean. I won’t give it a go.
January 25th, 2008 9:09 am
Wow, your house must be huge! That tub looks like it’s in the middle of a basketball court!
Your kitty’s adorable!
January 25th, 2008 9:50 am
We used to have a Toy poodle named Monty (my God) when I was litte and I hated the little *%$#&, so I’d put him in the bathtub and watch him try to get out. Same principle, more fun. Am I going to rot in hell?
January 25th, 2008 9:51 am
Yes - she has her servants fill it for her, too. With Evian, warmed only by the sun and warm breath of a virgin.
January 25th, 2008 10:06 am
We have recently adopted “Moe” who is about 4 months old and looks so much like this cat they could be siblings! Loved the post.
January 25th, 2008 10:42 am
In our house it would be a bottle cap rather then a bead! Our tortie, Snickers plays this game with and without us. If she has a bottle cap then it is guaranteed that she will put it in the bathtub at least once to play with during the week.
January 25th, 2008 11:47 am
colin, what goes around comes around but perhaps you were young.
great post, needed a laugh. Bull’s favorite toy is a cereal box to tear up and carry all the peices around the house for me to collect. sometime we play tug-of-war. (bull is a dog) barb
January 25th, 2008 12:09 pm
Okay, we tried this with our cats, and one of them just sat in the tub, looking around blankly (her usual way), and the other one was afraid! He hunkered down until the bead stopped rolling and then he jumped out of the tub and ran!
I was so hoping they’d like it, but apparently our cats are…….freaks.
January 25th, 2008 12:37 pm
perhaps the marble incident is when atticus became enlightened and changed his name to sri patticus?
if this is the case, i will head for our bottomless pit of a bathtub and use one of bob’s “life is good” golf balls.
January 25th, 2008 1:36 pm
Barb, does that mean I am going to be a Toy poodle named Monty in my next life?
January 25th, 2008 1:44 pm
colin - it means that you will someday find yourself in a VERY large bath tub with no way to get out!
January 25th, 2008 1:56 pm
empty pistachio shells chased around the kitchen do something similar to my Frida
January 25th, 2008 2:23 pm
joy - sri patticus would say that enlightenment is much deeper than just getting knocked in the head with a marble. (the rest of us are not so sure. sri patticus has had many a moment that contained the possibility of enlightenment!)
all these comments are fun! great cat stories and images!
sarah - not all cat games are the same for every kitty. my other two cats never go into the bath tub. (of course — billie has horrible memories of falling IN to the tub when it was full with me in it. come to think of it - I have horrible memories of that as well!)
January 25th, 2008 3:21 pm
Okay, I am laughing my FOOL HEAD OFF! This is just too perfect. I really needed this! Thanks Christine! As a “certifiable” cat owner, I can attest that their neurotic ways DO become yours…it’s useless to fight it…resistance is futile…
January 25th, 2008 5:10 pm
I would like to offer my appreciation for the way that this blog can move comfortably between stories of painful personal upheaval to stories of driving your cat bonkers. That rules.
Here’s playing instructions for my favorite cat’s favorite game:
1. Obtain 2′-3′ of fabric ribbon, about 1″ wide.
2. Invite your cat to join you on the couch.
3. Drag the ribbon slowly or quickly past the cat.
4. Consult your watch and notice that an hour has flown by.
January 25th, 2008 6:02 pm
The best online cat game is: http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/chatnoir/chatnoir.html
…
January 25th, 2008 8:28 pm
Ah, there are times when I wish that I wasn’t terribly, terribly allergic to cats. That sounds like fun. Slightly crazy fun, but fun nonetheless.
Also, The Marble Incident sounds like it should be a talky, black and white spy movie. Hey, I’d watch it.
January 27th, 2008 10:55 pm
Ooh, must try this! Am always looking for new games for my cats, especially when I’m procrastinating (as I am now).
By the way, I don’t know if you’re interested or not, but I’m back to blogging. I used to have Novelist in Training, but my blog was hijacked. After a year, I’m back to it. If you’re curious, I explain it all here: http://booklady.wordpress.com/2007/12/28/hijacked/
It’s really good to be back to blogging–and back to reading all those blogs that I missed while gone!
January 28th, 2008 10:40 am
This is kind of like cat pinball. Witness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoEiE3q1twE
Emma also loves to play in the bathtub after somebody finishes taking a shower, so I’ll have to throw in a ping pong ball next time.
January 28th, 2008 6:27 pm
Depending on your tub,(or your tub drain to be more precise), you may need to add one more step prior to step 3; Place drain stopper over tub drain :-> Our cats love this came too, but we (oops, I mean They) play it with a ping pong type ball. Talk about wild and noisy. What a hoot. Game doesn’t last long though if ball settles into the drain hole. Oh and by the way, this type of ball really can go sailing, so might want to double check that toilet seat is down if toilet within 1000 feet of tub. Some cats, I won’t mention any names here, take great delight in conducting float tests in any and all accessible containers of water. And some just have uncanny aim.
Thanks Christine. Your blog is just the BEST!
January 28th, 2008 11:50 pm
It’s wonderful to see your beautiful kitty in the tub…..she’s much like our Cat Mandu that lived to the ripe old age of 22. We missed her dreadfully but decided that our run with kitty cats was probably over. We do continue our love affair with dogs though - just can never pass up a dog without a pat and a touch of their ears!
If you’d like to see our Westie Riley in person come over to his site - http://rileyfactorfiction.blogspot.com and if your pet would like to appear on Riley’s site, just send his person a jpeg photo with some facts about your pet and Riley will spin a little fact or fiction for you:)
January 29th, 2008 12:45 am
What fun! I will have to try it out with my darlings!
Annie
xxx
January 30th, 2008 3:42 pm
LMAO…. what a dangerous game!
Some cats like to play water, ‘eh. Just like this cat :
http://www.freehobo.com/videos/8583584the-water-thief
January 30th, 2008 4:25 pm
Ping pong ball. Very light weight, marvelous fun for everyone.
January 31st, 2008 5:52 am
I got a better game: use cat biscuits instead. We call it Bikkies in the Bath and our cats have been playing it for several years now. You can do all kinds of throws and placements for pounces. It’s sad tho when one goes down the plughole.
January 31st, 2008 1:38 pm
my cat loves these in the bath tub (and everywhere else):
http://cabirdnerds.com/wb100.html
too big to eat, too lightweight to konk his little brain.
January 31st, 2008 10:55 pm
Can’t wait to try this! We’re stuck running up and down the stairs throwing and picking up the fluffy ball she likes to chase. But she hasn’t learned to return it. Truly, my other cat actually “fetched” when she was little. I think she got smarter as she grew older and thought “you go get it” after we threw the paper wad.
February 1st, 2008 7:44 pm
I can confirm that a plastic clothes peg makes a reasonable substitute!
February 4th, 2008 1:59 pm
My cats invented this game themselves… But they use bottle caps and the goal is to get he bottle cap into the drain. It requires much patience… First, find the bottle cap. It is usually in the owner’s possession and must be fished out when the owner is not looking. Then it must be carried to the bathroom and dropped in the toy. Then the game can start. The more caps in the tub when the owner showers, the better… especially if she doesn’t catch the one blocking the drain.
February 5th, 2008 6:05 pm
We use aluminum foil balled up into very tight ball. Hours of fun for our cat, and he carries it around the house in his mouth to whichever location is suitable (usually wherever I am). Every now and then a new one has to be made when the old has been lost…the other day I looked under the couch for something that had fallen, and found the aluminum foil ball graveyard.
Love the wooden marble cat game - we will try this one very soon!
February 5th, 2008 6:59 pm
Albert Schweitzer said, “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.”
February 5th, 2008 9:11 pm
Love the game ideas and the weblink to the “flushing cat” from Larry. My cat used to sit on the edge of the tub and stir it up for me while I bathed. What is it with kitties and water? Some like it hot, some like it—not!
February 6th, 2008 11:01 am
Loved the blog and Harley loves this game, too! His fave, though, is dispensing his own icecubes from the frig door (which he can reach from the counter) and playing ‘ice hockey’ until the cube melts. You can imagine how perplexed I was initially,stepping into these little puddles barefooted, not knowing ‘exactly’ what these puddles were!
February 7th, 2008 5:24 pm
i think that is so great will have to try with my cat. he loves to lay in bathtub already
February 9th, 2008 6:00 pm
I tried this with my cat- She just stared at me as if I had forty heads before jumping out of the tub…
February 17th, 2008 4:19 pm
thats a damn fine and simple idea …. always the best! My cats love the empty tub and always want to play in there and often drink from a bowl placed especially in there for them… got to try this one!
February 21st, 2008 6:47 pm
used to do this with a ping pong ball when my cats were little.
February 25th, 2008 5:03 pm
Ummm, you might want to tell people -
Put the PLUG in the tub, so you arent’n trying to fish the bead out of the drain.
Other good tub toys - ping pong balls, WALNUTS! and the plastic milk bottle caps!
February 27th, 2008 2:24 am
My cat likes to play with twist ties and bottle caps, he actually seems to like them more than any toy we’ve ever bought him:P I’ll see what he thinks of this tub game…
March 1st, 2008 10:19 pm
Our youngest cat used to carry marbles around to various play locations — the bathtub being one of her favorites. She has since graduated to real mice despite the fact that she is not allowed outside (ah, the “pleasures” of an old stone foundation!) She usually heads straight to the bathtub with her catch. I had to laugh though, the day I saw her catch a fly on the windowsill, jump down, and trot off to the bathtub.
March 7th, 2008 12:12 am
I had a game for my kitten as well, when I smoked, I used to take the soft pack leave the cellophane on it make it into a ball and throw it down a long hallway, and ask the kitten to bring it back, it took a while to train him but eventually he would chase after it and bring it back to me, he even did this when he got older.
March 7th, 2008 12:18 am
I tried the bead with my can, he had a ball! After that he would lay on his side in the bath tub, he like laying in the bath tub even in the summer, I guess because it was cool.
April 7th, 2008 10:00 pm
Try this…place a mirror on floor against wall..have cat enter room…watch as he goes nuts after his reflection…works best with kitties. ha ha!
April 22nd, 2008 5:45 am
I do this with a bouncy ball wrapped in plastic wrap (slows the ball, makes more noise).
I never do find the ball again.