Cat Toys

Lexy has been living with us for over a year now and has gotten lots and lots of cat toys in the meantime to amuse herself. The cat toys vary from small toy mice to fluffy balls to lasers. Some of them have piqued Lexy's interest more than others, but there are two cat toys that drives our cat absolutely crazy each and every time: Da Bird and the laser. Da Bird is an interactive feather cat toy that look and sound like a real bird in flight. Lexy goes crazy after it each and every single time leaping and running after it. The only caveat with this toy is that the feathers gets torn up fairly quickly by our cat's strong claws and teeth and we had to buy replacement feathers fairly frequently.

Lexy also enjoys chasing after a laser beam--she thinks it's some sort of a weird insect. The laser beam is better than Da Bird in the regard that Lexy can not "catch" the laser beam and rip it apart like she does all the time with feather cat toy. But the laser toy can also cause damage to her eyes. Also, I think she's a little frustrated that she can't catch it ever!

The worst cat toy that we ever bought for Lexy is also one of the more expensive cat toys--a remote control toy mouse than stopped working after less than a day. If I could start all over again, I would simply buy Lexy just Da Bird and a laser pointer. It would have saved us a lot of money and our cat would had a lot of interactive fun chasing after them.

How to Deal with a Biting Cat

While Lexy is the perfect cat in many, many ways (cute, playful, and fluffy), she does have a terrible habit. She is a biter. She bits quite frequently as evidenced my scratched up hands. The problem is quite avoidable though and here are the following tips on how to deal with a biting cat.

First of all, never hit the cat for biting. It will only make the cat scared of you and much more likely to bite you in the future out of fear. What you can do instead is to say in a loud, firm voice "NO!" and immediately stop doing whatever you were doing with it. If you were playing with your cat and your cat play bites you, then immediately stop playing with it and ignore your cat for approximately ten minutes. If you were petting your cat, stop petting it. Your cat probably just bite you because it was either overstimulated and is giving you a love bit or it doesn't want to be petted anymore.

However, my biggest problem is that I don't want to stop petting the cat. I want to keep on to keep on touching its soft fur and continue to pet her at the expense of my hands. Therefore, my cat has never really learned the lesson that biting is not good. But lately, when she starts to bite my hand, I been redirecting her attention to a cat toy or a piece of string. That serves to make her stop biting my hand as well as letting me pet her. It's not a perfect solution, but until I can resist all the furry cuteness, that's the best solution.