It can be hard to make decisions when it comes to what toys you should buy a new kitten. Their personalities can be difficult to tell, especially if they are not properly adjusted to your home. Not only that, as an individual who has raised 3 cats so far, I can tell you that I still find it fairly difficult to keep their interest on certain toys. So now that my kitten Kalista has become an adult, I thought… why not document her favourite toys so that next time I get a kitten I can refer to this list and remember what she loved!
Hope this list helps some of you new kitten owners as well!
1. Spot! Springs
By far springs are Kalista’s favourite toy to play with. Before we were even allowed to bring Kalista home, we were told that she’s a huge fan of these springs and we were in luck since we had previously bought hundreds of them for Beau (no joke.) Kalista has played with the springs daily since she moved in with us and oftentimes walks around with one in her mouth, running from room to room. For such an inexpensive toy, they sure do get a lot of play.
2. Da Bird!
It took me years to decide whether or not I was going to buy this toy for my cats. The main reason I didn’t want to buy it for them was the price. Da Bird! retails around $14 in Canada, but I can tell you it was 100% worth it for me. It’s the one teaser I can pull out and the cats will chase it for a solid hour. (It’s me who gets exhausted of playing with it!) Hands down Kalista’s absolute favourite teaser toy.
3. PetSafe Bolt Interactive Laser Cat Toy
Kalista absolutely loved playing with the Bolt Interactive Laser Cat Toy, however, I will say she responded even better when we turned it onto the manual mode. That being said, I recommend buying your kitten a standard laser pointer. Just make sure whatever kind of laser pointer you buy it’s durable and creates sporadic movements.
4. Pet Stages Tower of Tracks Interactive Toy
This has been the center of endless fun between Beau and Kalista. Sometimes they sit at opposite ends and pass balls to each other. Sometimes while they’re play fighting they stop to play with the balls and go back to boxing. Every so often you hear Kalista bat at the tower just to take out some of her kitten energy.
5. SPOT Elasteeez Catnip Cat Toy
While at the start we weren’t huge fans of this toy, as soon as we introduced Kalista to this toy and sprayed it with a little bit of catnip spray she wouldn’t leave it alone! Something I didn’t really talk about was the fact that we were going to have to give Kalista back to the rescue so they could get her checked because she was peeing in her sleep, and the first thing my partner told me was that we needed to send Kalista with this toy.
6. JW Cataction Spring String Cat Toy
This was another toy that took a bit of time for my cats to warm up to, and I can safely assume the main problem was its placement in the house. My cats only started playing with this toy when it was placed on my french doors next to the office I work in. I would recommend placing this toy somewhere similar if you do choose to buy it (somewhere with lots of place for them to jump and run at it, and somewhere where you are the majority of the day.)
While this isn’t the longest list, these were the toys Kalista found the most enjoyable as a kitten. What did your little ones love to play with when they were young? Do you have any recommendations that we should check out the next time we have a kitten? Let me know in the comments below!
By far the best toy, voted on by all our successive cats, has been a tightly wrapped ball of kitchen foil, about the size of a golf ball.
It skitters across the tiled floor with the cat chasing it like Lionel Messi! Throwing the ball creates huge energy spurts and some exercise for me as I have to retrieve it from under sofas etc. Alongside the Red Worm on a stick, the foil ball are the favourites.
Foil balls are definitely awesome! I wish my cats were more into them, but my sister’s cats LOVE them!
All of those are scores in our book! We haven’t tried DaBird and I keep meaning to!
Let me know if you do try DaBird! It was game-changing for us!
Those are some of our favorite toys too!
Glad to hear we share some favourites!
The spring toys are are huge hit here; Da Boyz play with them all of the time! In fact, The Hubby just stepped on one, and killed it, so I should buy more soon. Angel, on the other hand, will only play with a wand toy, and only when I drag it along the floor!
I love how popular the spring toys are! Cats are just so happy with the simplest of toys… oh.. and lots of attention from their humans! (Sometimes 😉 )