Simple, free cat toys are often the best

This is a really cute photograph of a Siamese cat with a ring of plastic in his mouth. It's one of those security plastic rings used to keep the screw top of a milk container in place during transportation. Just another bit of waste plastic to humans. A great toy for this Siamese cat. I can remember my cat being fascinated with one of those plastic covers for a three pin UK plug. He chased it around the room for hours. Another bit of plastic to be discarded but in the meantime a great cat toy.

Simple, free cat toys are often the best. This is Mikey with his favourite toy. Photo: u/iwantmyhalfsleeve 

As long as the bit of waste plastic is sufficiently large and therefore cannot be ingested these are great toys. They probably remind domestic cats of insects. They are a similar size. They are not animated which is why cats animate them by pushing them around.

This 'old-style' Siamese cat, Mikey, made the front page on the Reddit.com website five years ago according to his owner. He has sadly reached the end of his life. About eight hours ago his human caregiver announced that tomorrow he is going over the Rainbow Bridge. He will join his brother there on the other side.

Wouldn't it be great if we could all meet up with our long-lost, deceased cats on the other side? I would love to do that although I don't believe in it. It's a charming thought nonetheless.

Home-made cat toys of the very simple kind are often as good as the most expensive manufactured toys. We don't need to spend money on cat toys. My girlfriend likes to buy cat toys for my cat at Christmas. That's fine. It gives her enjoyment. Far more enjoyment for her than for my cat 😉. He might play with them. I stress that he might play with them but if he does it won't last that long.

I have said this in the past: plastic cat toys aren't ideal because they can't be killed! Cats want to see the destruction of a toy to confirm that they have hunted it and killed it. That's the theory and it is a good one.

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It's why you see cats ripping scrunched up paper balls to death. It's why you see them destroying toilet rolls. They want to destroy it. You know that all domestic cat play is a substitute for hunting and killing. They can push an item of plastic around the room to simulate hunting. But they have got to end up killing it.

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Clearly, the desire to kill was not satisfied with respect to this plastic ring. That's a downside but it seems that the upside outweighed the negative. This boy loved his plastic ring and although he couldn't kill it it didn't stop him playing with it and hunting it.