Make a Paper Feather Toy for Cats
I’m always looking for new ways to entertain cats. I’m a great fan of recycling and making toys out of readily available items. A paper feather is a quick and easy to make. (Unless you are creating a job lot for numerous cats.)
How to Make a Paper Feather Toy for Cats
Finding new toys for cats needn’t cost lots of money. At a craft session sometime ago, I’d made a feather out of paper as a house decoration. When I got home I'd just left them on the side. Bean knocked them off straight away as that what he does. Then once they were on the floor, he was happy to pat them. When I wiggled them, he thought it was great fun. Bean always thinks everything is a game and and will make his own entertainment.
This got me wondering if other cats would like them as well. I took one of these to Oreo who is a bit of a hunter and he loved it.
So recently I finally got round to making a big batch of them to take on visits. Some cats like the texture of the paper feather end whereas others like the string. I only do short strings as I know some cats like to chew and eat strings.
My most recent batch of paper feathers were made with recycled brown wrapping paper and natural string. You can always use pretty paper, recycled packing paper or anything that you have lying around.
They have been a great hit. My favourite is when the cats carry the feather in their mouth – very proud of their prey.
How to Make a Pretend Feather Toy
Here is a guide to how I made the feather toys.
All you need is paper, a glue stick and string.
- Cut a piece of paper to the size of two feathers (front and back)
- Put glue stick on half of the paper
- Put a short piece of string down the middle on one half of the paper.
- Fold the paper in half so that the string is sandwiched
- Rub the paper to make sure all is stuck especially around the string.
- Cut the edge of the paper so it’s feather shaped. I had to look on Google to check.
- Then cut in around the edge to create the barbs of the feather. This makes it move more for the cats to chase.
Always keep an eye on your pets to make sure that they don't eat or cause themselves any damage with new toys.
I did think that the shapes I ended up making were more like leaves. I think some cats would like them as leaves but with the string, it gave me more options for moving them. Particularly with cats that move fast - it gives my hand a bit of safety from cat claws.
Hopefully the photos below will help to make sense of the written instructions.
If you make this and your cat loves it, I'd love it if you could send a photo to me.
