A selection of Loki’s favourite toys, including some that should NOT be played with, but try telling him that. Not shown: my bras & knickers. It took awhile to round everything up – the little yellow shoelace (this came from his original home) was finally discovered in Loki’s Lair behind the books, and his purple cord was found buried in the laundry hamper. For some I just put a sample image (one pencil rather than ALL of my pens & pencils, one sock, and just a few business cards) and there are usually several crumpled paper balls going at any given time. Of the balls he seems to show a preference for the orange pingpong ball because it goes REALLY FAST, but lately he’s been playing more with the little green & white dingle ball, which as you can imagine is quite a joy to listen to around 3am. That green bouncy ball is actually a bit dangerous as when it is left directly against the front door it acts as an excellent door stop and the door cannot be opened from the outside. The green thread spools are always fun – they make more noise than the wine corks. And business cards are not only challenging to pick up in his teeth but they are excellent for hoarding, usually behind the books, but often he just loves to display his captured prey on Sunny’s old bed, which he took over almost from day one.
Below you can see Loki spoiled for choice – he was clearly confused to see ALL HIS TOYS in one spot and finally opted for the crumpled paper ball. You can also see another of Loki’s favourite toys (too large to show here) as well as an example of kitteh hoarding… heh
spoiled for choice
curtain call
what bottle of wine?
casa azahar 
haha, I love these pictures!!
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Heh, I had fun with this post, and it took me and Nog a good half hour to track down all the usual toys this morning. You can really see the difference in Loki’s face in the bottom two photos – the bed one was taken yesterday and the curtain one … oh, at least six weeks ago. His face is a lot less kittenish now. He still has an eensy-weensy mew though.
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This is a fun post, he’s so cute! And so big already! It cracks me up that you gathered all his “toys” up for a photo shoot.
Kittens are so darned adorable. You never remember how annoying they are at 3 a.m. until you get another one.
Does he climb your clothes in the closet and climb the curtains as well?
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He loves getting into the closet and rummaging around, but so far hasn’t tried climbing anything. A couple of times he’s been accidentally shut in there and it’s like having a poltergeist seeing the closet doors rattling away and threatening to burst open. 🙂
The only dangly curtains I have are the floor-to-ceiling ones I hung in the bedroom doorway after I removed the door. Loki loves playing “ghost cat” with these as they’re long enough to drape over the foot of the bed (he takes a running jump onto the bed straight through the curtains). And although they’re a bit clawed up at the ends he hasn’t tried climbing them. At this point (and weight) I imagine he’d bring the rods and everything crashing down if he tried.
Yep, never a dull moment…
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This reminded me of when our next-door-neighbour on City Island, in New York, who worked at the Bronx Zoo told me that she was volunteering to babysit the baby gorillas. She said “They are just like human babies — If human babies could climb the curtains and swing from the ceiling fixtures!”.
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He’s growing so fast! Still as cute as a button, though. Especially with that “What, me? I didn’t touch it, guv, honest!” look.
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Yeah, both Loki and Azar are quite expert at the “who us?” look…
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My cats like Spike’s relatives too… I just found one under the easy chair.
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Apparently the little spiky bits are quite fun to gnaw on.
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For a while, Benjamin enjoyed the toy I made from the plastic thing in the centre of a Kindersurprise with a penny or a marble in it. Sort of like a Weeble.
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I’m worried that if the dingle ball breaks open Loki might end up choking on the little bell, but then I worry about all sorts of things like that. To wit, there has not been an elastic band in my home for over 17 years. The Kinder thingy might be a sturdier place for the bell. Good idea.
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I know someone who actually found an elastic band protruding from his cat’s stern, wasn’t sure what it was at first, the cat ran away when he grabbed onto it and POIT! right in the face, straight out of the cat’s rear… he was terrified for the cat but she came out of the experience undamaged. He doesn’t keep elastic bands around his house anymore either. I have to fan myself just thinking about it.
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Agustín once told me about his friend’s mastiff who ate a piece of elastic bandage – it tied his intestines into knots and the poor thing died horribly.
And I reckon an elastic band could do the same thing to a cat. Sure, it might pass straight through, but what if it didn’t?
Likewise, when I was living in my little ground-floor apartment in Salamanca with Lua, the neighbour’s kitten used to come over and visit (we shared a patio). I never worried much about Lua because I knew she was way too smart to ever do anything stupid, but one day when the kitten was over visiting he found a plastic supermarket bag that had fallen to the floor, got his head stuck in one of the handle openings and proceeded to spin around in a total panic trying to get free, but he only succeeded in tying it tighter and tighter around his little neck. If I hadn’t been in the room at the time the little guy would have been a goner. Since then NO plastic bags left out anywhere either.
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I forgot to even mention dried flowers and brooms.
My elfish little tuxedo cat, Patty Twinkle, had a pica for strawy crackly things. We thought she just liked shredding the ends of the kitchen corn broom, but it turned out she’d been eating it, and also eating a dried arrangement that used to sit in my office. One night she horrifyingly began to throw up bloody gook. One emergency vet and one transfer to the regular vet later, I was being asked if she could possibly have eaten something like a tampon because her stomach was so jammed with stuff. In fact, tampons in that house were kept in a sealed jar (do not ask why). The vet said it would have to be surgery and warned me about the expense — one of those moments when you find yourself shrieking down the phone “THIS IS WHY GOD MADE VISA CARDS!!!” When the vet got her opened up, out came a wad of broom straw the size of two thumbs, decorated with dried baby’s breath and all tied in a red Christmas ribbon. She said it was the damndest thing she had ever taken out of a cat. It’s still in my cellar freezer in a Baggie. Patty lived another nine years. For all those years the broom was stored bristles up.
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I forgot! I also had one with a bell in it!
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Ummmm… the Kinder thing… not its rear end….
We haven’t used tinsel in years. Cats have a habit of eating it and while it is amusing to see a cat with tinsel hanging out of its butt, it can be dangerous, not just for the reasons mentioned but because tinsel often has mercury (not to mention any other heavy metals added by manufacturers in China). Vets warn against pulling any foreign objects out of an animal’s behind because it can do damage if it is looped and or is sharp.
I recall watching an episode of “Vets in Practice”, I think it was, where a dog had swallowed a rock and couldn’t get rid of it normally. The vet had to pull it out and it was an hour of pulling before it finally popped out (I initially typed pooped lol). It was a first for that vet.
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Another adorable thing about Loki is that he LOVES people, just like Sunny did. Unlike Azar, who still behaves like everyone is going to try and rip his front leg off (though of course he’s quite adorable in other ways). Here’s a pic of Jessica and Loki last Sunday when she was over…
Loki & Jessica
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I often wonder which part of the cat brain that makes a cat choose to play with a noisy toy in the middle of the night, like at 02.27 when you finally managed to fall asleep…
When Lynx celebrated his 3rd birthday recently I gave him a VERY STOOPID toy – a purple mouse that squeaks like a real one when touched. Of course he or Leopardess go mouse hunting in the middle of the night…
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Loki can be just as noisy with a piece of paper as with his dingle ball, especially if the paper starts “fighting back”, so I don’t think it much matters what sort of toy they have. Squeaky mouse might have been just the eensiest beit stoopid though…
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Susan and CioCio were MAD for crumpled paper balls, so much so that when I would tear a piece of paper they would be right there waiting for it to be “finalized” into the ball.
I love these pictures, Loki is sinfully cute.
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Other large toys that don’t appear in these pictures are the broom and the mop. They go ‘swoosh’ and everything, and the mop has dangly bits, too. Totally irressistible – like toes under the bedcovers, the sound of cupboard doors opening, the bathtaps running and strawberry yoghurt.
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Ha! I forgot about running water. He doesn’t even mind getting wet. 🙂
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Benjamin, despite not having been fed from a can in years always comes when he hears the can opener. I don’t DARE pick up the little chain and clip that came on the old laser pointer. He would climb mountains and swim seas in a 3 seconds if he heard THAT.
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