Dear Sparkle,
My favorite toys ever are those cool, shiny crinkle balls! I love batting them all over the house, carrying them around in my mouth and especially dropping them into the bathtub and playing hockey with them! The only problem is that my roommate — a calico with a torbie face — loves them too, but she isn’t nearly as careful with them as I am. She’ll play with one for, like, five minutes and the next thing I know, she has batted it underneath the stove where neither of us can get it. Then, when I tell my human what has happened, it takes her the longest time to figure out what I am talking about. Sometimes she just ignores me, and meanwhile my sister is doing the same thing with every other crinkle ball in the house. Once, when my human finally figured out what I wanted, she pulled six balls out from under the stove. Well, right now I am down to one crinkle ball and I’d kind of like to hang onto it for as long as possible. Any suggestions?
Signed,
Crazy for Crinkle Balls
Dear Crazy,
Is there somewhere in the house where your roommate never hangs out? That is where you will want to hide your crinkle ball when you are not playing with it. If your home is like any typical multi-cat household, this should be easier than you might think. I imagine that over the years, your human has bought all sorts of cat toys that she thought were fun, but were actually really lame. You know, some fancy electronic gadget, or a cat cube that looked nice, but smelled funky. Usually these things get shunted off in a corner somewhere because your human keeps hoping that after all the money she spent on them, maybe you will decide you like them someday. Of course, you know that is never going to happen and I bet your sister avoids those toys like the plague. So that is exactly where your crinkle ball should be when not in use — hiding inside or behind one of those stupid toys. Meanwhile, remember that there are still a bunch of crinkle balls under the stove and keep on begging your human to get them back out. If you only play with the one you have left while your roommate is asleep, maybe she will think that there are none left, and she will help you beg. It would be nice if your human would block off the space underneath the stove to keep the balls from flying under there, but if she can’t figure out they are there in the first place, it is a stretch thinking she is capable of doing something to stop them from winding up there.
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Hmmmmm, Mabe it’s a Calico thing.
Oh, thanks! We keep looseing our catnip mice because some calico that’s name starts with Ch keeps taking them outside with her and then leaves them there! She admits she’s a little forgetful.
we make our mom check under the fridge every day. She is pretty smart and we have her trained.
I think proper training is essential
bonks
Excellent advice Sparkle.
purrin
xoxox
That’s very good advice Sparkle and we’ll try to follow it here too!
Good sound advice, Sparkle — for the crinkle ball kitty and her mom!
Sage advice Sparkle!!!
Mommy always looks under the dryer for our toys…she’d better check the stove, too!
We just KNOW there’s about 73 mice under there. At least.
My sister Zoe is in charge of all the toys, she knows where each one is too!
roflmao at everyone’s comments about losing their balls and balls not fitting under the couch, etc, etc!!!!!!
BTW..this post was soooo cute!
I hate it when the other cats loose my toys or when the cleaning lady comes and puts the up out of reach.
The cleaning human that comes here also puts our toys in weird places! I don’t get why she can’t just vacuum and mop around them – they ARE there for a reason, you know!
Hm…we were never much for the crinkle balls. Now, our nip hamsters, that’s a different story. That is worth singing about!
You are a wise cat Sparkle
Great advice Sparkle – every toy we have seems to end up under the stove too – when there is nothing left to play with mum gets the torch out and looks under everything and we get about a squillion toys back and we don’t even know that some of them were missing!!
Excellent post, Sparkle. Just the right tone about the slow-thinking human, and youa re SO right about humans buying stupid toys we don’t like, then leaving them around in the hopes we will play in or with them. Especially re the cube. My human got one, but I have negative interest in it. I actually have not experienced crinkle balls but I even suspect they would be dull in my eyes.
That’s some good advice, Sparkle. And we would think that after the human has retrieved the sparkly balls from under the stove for the 600th time, she would finally get the idea to block off that area…but probably not…humans can be so dense sometimes.
Great advice Sparkle. What a good idea to hide the balls in an old toy where no one else will look. Those crinkly balls are fun but ours all go under the stove too. Hope you have a great week Sparkle.
Thankyou for your good advice, Sparkle. Fui keeps getting my ping pong balls stuck under the coffee table, and it is driving me bananas!
Losing yoor balls is neber a good thing. MOL!
Oh my COD !!! I’m about to say exactly the same thing as Sparkle !…
.NO…I”M KIDDING !!!
Hee..Heh..hee…I even can’t get my balls under my couch : )