Have you tried the box it came in?
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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They seem more afraid of it than excited. I guess that's my donation for the SPCA Christmas rummage sale this year.
On the plus side, it gets dust bunnies out of tight crevices better than the vacuum cleaner does.
The real cat tip is in the comments.
We used to have a tunnel cat toy that linked together and made a complete circle. I would toss ours into the tunnel and all the cats would play with it through the sections of the tunnel until the battery died.
Ooh good idea! My cats have had something similar to OPs toy. They loved it at first, then grew tired.
Then I got the mat accessory, which is like a big pocket made out of the spring wire sun shades for cars, and the toy contained inside mimicked a panicked mousie. They loved playing with that. Then grew tired.
A new venue for the coked up 'mouse' toy would probably rekindle their interest for a couple of weeks.
So the solution is just rotate the same toys every few weeks so they get excited about them again or once the cats are bored that's it, even if you bring the toy out after a gap they won't care for it
I spent a lot of money before I realized my cat likes cardboard and trash. I bought them one of those colorfull 100 packs of pipe cleaners and when they get bored of one shape/color I change. Work wonders
Mine were at first too. But we just left it laying around without turning it on for a while and they got more comfortable with it, because the next time we thought to turn it on, they played with it more.
The dog took to it right away, so we kept it. After a few months of using it with the dog, the cat finally took part.
They still prefer toys I have to use by hand though.
I designed a concept around six different boxes that all had two openings, one front one back, and it would shoot furry balls (think something like tennis balls) along the ground into the hole of the next box, where it would be caught (there's two ball slots per box (there's always one ball in the box) and they are spring loaded so they can get shot out in front or in back) and you'd put them in like a hexagon of sorts, and then they'd shoot these balls at each other, and the cat, presumably, would try to catch them.
One of the boxes had a voltage set too high and now I'm not allowed around cats no more.
My dogs love those