New Toy Friday #1 - The World’s Best Budget Cat Toy: THE CAT DANCER
See our first New Toy Friday video here, and check out the product itself here.
Gandalf and Dave represent two very different ends of the playfulness spectrum. Gandalf is exuberance incarnate: a natural athlete, curious about everything, with an insatiable appetite for playtime. Dave, by contrast, is…. well, Dave. His athletic performance skills are lacking (to put it nicely), his paw-eye coordination is nonexistent, he tends to fear that which he does not understand (which is most things), and he has—time and time again—disproven the theory that cats always land on their feet.
I conceptualized “New Toy Friday” this past Wednesday, partially as a means of justifying my inescapable tendency to order cat products after two glasses of wine. My main initiative with it was to discover new ways to keep Gandalf engaged and entertained; keeping up with her boundless energy and alarming intellect is no small task, even with both Jackson and I working from home. Creating an enriching environment is something very important to us both, and I’ve never met a cat who needs it quite as much as Gandalf.
The world of cat toys is a strange and wonderful place, filled with both fantastical treasures and absolute garbage. I wanted to start simple, with something at least moderately reputable. Enter the Cat Dancer: a 3-pack of toys, retailing for $8.01. Inexpensive cat toys are a dime a dozen, but the feedback on the Cat Dancer caught my eye: it boasted a 4.9/5 star score from 1,490 ratings. I couldn’t recall ever having seen a cat toy with such overwhelmingly positive reviews, and so I had our very first “New Toy Friday” candidate.
Friends, it doesn’t get much more simple than this. Included in the toy’s official description is the phrase “rolled paper tubes on a 35” wire.” Basic as basic can be.
And my cats went crazy for it.
Dave—who is more likely to chase the shadow of a toy than the toy itself—was immediately on it. Those innate predatory skills that cats are supposed to have but that Dave seems to be utterly devoid of? We saw them tonight. Dave has never, not once, displayed the kind of excitement for a toy that the Cat Dancer brought out in him. Jackson and I could not stop laughing; it was like Dave had been replaced with an entirely different cat.
Natilla and Gandalf were equally enthused; whether we boinged the dancer around in the air or dragged it along the floor for them to scurry after, they were entranced. Completely.
After filming, I sat on the floor with Gandalf, editing the video on my phone with one hand and wielding the new toy with the other. Gandalf was laser-focused on those odd little cardboard tubes the entire time—save for those moments when I would get distracted and stop waggling the wand about. Gandalf made sure to quickly remedy those instances by screaming at me, which is always a foolproof tactic.
Though we’ve had them for just a few hours, I’m already in awe of these strange little toys. They prove something that so many of us cat owners already know to be true: that no matter how much money you spend or how many fancy toys you try, for cats—at the end of the day—sometimes simple really is best.
