How to keep your cats from being bored

After reading Animals Make Us Human (great book, well worth reading), I realized Wally is destructive because he’s bored. I’d far rather find ways for him to entertain himself that don’t involve broken glass or shredded paper towels or him eating plastic.

We got an automatic laser pointer at Christmas; it’s got four different patterns it uses to twirl the light around and it runs in five-minute increments, up to 20 minutes. Best of all, it’s very portable so we move it around the apartment all the time. That way, the pattern bounces off difference places and isn’t predictable. The cats love it, and will come beg us to turn it on. Yes, cats beg. They just do it differently than dogs.

We also keep boxes we get from ordering things for a few days and toss them on the floor for the cats. They love to climb in and out of the boxes, especially if we have a couple stacked up. Best of all, sometimes the boxes have long wide strips of brown paper. When we have it, we put the crumpled up paper on the floor when we run the laser pointer. The cats will "hide" in the various folds of the paper and then attack the laser pointer. Hey, anything to entertain them.

The latest round of brown paper is on our couch at the moment awaiting one of us bundling it up and taking it to the trash. But Wally liked getting on a pillow on the couch under the paper. And where Wally goes, Eddie must follow.