A popular television cat whisperer says that cats, especially housebound cats, need mental stimulation. Due to their curious natures and inborn hunting instinct, you should challenge them on a daily basis. One of his suggestions has to do with food and treats. Don’t just put their nibbles out in the same old place every time, make them hunt it. Get or make a treat teaser, something that contains treats but that the cat has to tussle with the get the treats out of.
Well, I love my furfaces and I certainly wouldn’t want to fail to challenge them. I want them to live full and happy cat-lives. As their benevolent life-time jailer, I want them to pass their eternal incarceration pleasantly, so I went out and bought a treat-dispensing toy.
It’s a weird wobbly thing. It looks like a smiling pear shaped alien. You screw off its head, fill its inside with treats, put its head back on and put it on the floor for your kitty-critters to attack. The more they bat at it, the more it wobbles, and the more treats fall out the hole in its side. A simple, but satisfying game that rewards the cat for indulging in its instinct to torture small creatures that cannot outrun them. What could be more natural and fun?
A bag full of bricks, apparently.
The alien toy has been in the house for two weeks now and no one has figured it out yet. I have tried showing them how to dispense the treats. I’ve bopped the alien with my toe, twirling it around violently as they watched completely enraptured. Over and over, they’ve seen me attack the toy, noticed the treats magically appearing at the creature’s base, and invariably leapt forward to gobble them down in paroxysms of delight.
Never, however, never have they made the connection - bap the alien, get the sweet smelly treat rewards. They just cannot figure it out.
I hate to say it, but my cats are not feline Einsteins.
In fact, it’s quite possible that my cats may be brain dead.
Either that or I waited too late to challenge them and their walnut sized brains shriveled up through disuse and got hacked out with furballs.
Oh dear. I may have accidentally vacuumed up all the kitty-smarts in my house.
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