iPad Games for Cats

I confess to playing bird songs on my iPad for our cat.

She's very bright--she immediately wanted to look under and behind the iPad.

Interestingly enough, she responds to local, native bird songs with alacrity (she used to be a partially outside cat) and others, say a New Zealand warbler, or an English Robin, are barely interesting.

*iz tempted*

^That would make it an iPawd.

Imagining iPawd apps for cats: iFeed, iScritch, iSleep...
Also direct online order links to the nearest purveyors of fake mice, catnip, cat trees, dog repellent, etc.

Man, the world these days. I don't even use laser pointers or anything to play with my cats. They prefer the good ol' string in a box over just about anything else, anyway. But holy cow, I kinda want to see how they'd react to the iPad apps.

Awesome.

I'm a bit concerned that this might be frustrating for the cat (goldfish one is the one I looked at). There's no pay-off, no 'victory' (ie, they can't catch anything), and I know that that makes some cats who play with the laser thingy quite miserable over time.

I think my cat would lay down on the screen--absorbing it's warmth--and go to sleep, rather than play the game.

I tried my cats out with a couple of iPhone cat games. Complete indifference. They like their laser pointer, tho, and I could apparently rig the iPhone up for that.

zahra said:

I'm a bit concerned that this might be frustrating for the cat (goldfish one is the one I looked at). There's no pay-off, no 'victory' (ie, they can't catch anything), and I know that that makes some cats who play with the laser thingy quite miserable over time.

Click to expand...

I can see the same issue myself. When we play toy chase or laser chase with the cats they get a treat reward for catching toys. Sometimes we replace the toy-onna-string with a strip of chicken onna string instead.

Although my now-passed Mething never needed that. Used to buy little wooden butterfly decorations down the road that had wings made of real feathers. Had to stop because she would catch it, growl at the other cats, slink off into a corner and EAT IT.

Daft beast.

More abstract games might work better. We hang a little wind chime just within stretched-kitty reach and sometimes they'll spend ages reaching up, gently batting one part of the chime and sitting back down to watch the chimes swing and listen to the pretty sounds. Then up again...

A short article about cats and strings as a public service announcement: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/cats_and_string/

At the very least, never let your cat play with strings unsupervised. And never pull on something that is caught 'just behind your cat's tongue'. I've seen xrays of what follows. It ain't pretty.

/aside

My cat would destroy the screen

Them claws ain't just for decoration!

Mine is happy go lucky with her mice. The more animal like a toy, the happier the little beast is.

Fenika said:

A short article about cats and strings as a public service announcement: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/cats_and_string/

At the very least, never let your cat play with strings unsupervised. And never pull on something that is caught 'just behind your cat's tongue'. I've seen xrays of what follows. It ain't pretty.

/aside

Click to expand...

Oh don't worry, we never used the kind of string that could snap off or be swallowed. It was always thick garden twine with blunted toothpicks securing things on. One of my cats got hold of, played with and subsequently swallowed the entire length of thread from a reel of sewing cotton once.

She made it out of surgery okay, but we got so worried.

Then again, I've also had to "extract" metre lengths of cotton and satin ribbon from the wrong end of my boy, Loosh'. I swear he must have figured out how to open the drawers I store them in.

Watch out for the hanging strings from blinds and drapes. My daughter's little cutie hanged himself from one that had been knotted together. My daughter found him. It almost killed her.

Well after hearing about this I had to try it. One cat likes the game, enjoys patting the screen and watching the fish appear and disappear, but loses interest after a minute or two. The other cat just watches, mesmerized. They're both elderly, though.