Our cat is generally lazy (being a cat and all). He'll play with normal toys for a couple minutes, but then seems to get bored and go back to napping. Not so with the laser beam. He'll chase that thing as long as I have the stamina to run it around the room.
I found, though, that if I made the little red devil "hide behind a pillow" or otherwise disappear somewhere, the cat would sit and stare at the spot where it disappeared for a protracted length of time. I talked to my sister about it, who, besides being a former professional horse trainer generally knows crap about animals, said that chasing the laser beam is actually somehow psychologically damaging to cats. It sounds suspiciously like doing damage to a totaled car, but she was vehement that, over time, it would cause him some serious problems, so I stopped doing it. It's an urge that's hard to resist, though. It's funny stuff.
I confess that I find the notion of it being psychologically-damaging to a cat to chase a red dot silly. How is it any worse than chasing anything else it can't catch?
Let it chase a rubber mouse or catnip toy and grab that so it gets a sense of victory. At worst, it learns that it can't catch everything.
cats *love* the beam!
ReplyDeleteNice Queen reference!
Now for the Catnip!
ReplyDeleteOur cat is generally lazy (being a cat and all). He'll play with normal toys for a couple minutes, but then seems to get bored and go back to napping. Not so with the laser beam. He'll chase that thing as long as I have the stamina to run it around the room.
ReplyDeleteI found, though, that if I made the little red devil "hide behind a pillow" or otherwise disappear somewhere, the cat would sit and stare at the spot where it disappeared for a protracted length of time. I talked to my sister about it, who, besides being a former professional horse trainer generally knows crap about animals, said that chasing the laser beam is actually somehow psychologically damaging to cats. It sounds suspiciously like doing damage to a totaled car, but she was vehement that, over time, it would cause him some serious problems, so I stopped doing it. It's an urge that's hard to resist, though. It's funny stuff.
I confess that I find the notion of it being psychologically-damaging to a cat to chase a red dot silly. How is it any worse than chasing anything else it can't catch?
ReplyDeleteLet it chase a rubber mouse or catnip toy and grab that so it gets a sense of victory. At worst, it learns that it can't catch everything.