Playtime with cats!
Playtime is important for cats as it encourages their natural predatory instincts or 'hunting behaviour'. It is crucial for kittens and young cats as it helps them to acquire cognitive and motor skills such as stalking,chasing and trapping prey. It also helps them to socialise with other cats.
Play helps to exercise your cat, keep them active and help maintain healthy weight especially those cats that live mainly indoors. Playing with your cat helps you to bond and interact with them and it can also help in preventing behaviour problems that arise from boredom.
Cat toys are great as they encourage batting and pouncing behaviour. In our cat hotel we have both electronic toys and human interaction toys. Our electronic toys include timed lasers, hiding mice,electric fox tails and electric feather teasers. These electronic tiys are great for shy cats as you can turn them on and leave the cat play with them. However we would reccommend playing with them as this is the best way to interact with your cat and help them to show their natural instinctive behaviour.
In the videos below we have Gilbert playing with the timed laser and we have Dinger playing with the hiding mouse.
