Captain and Stanley both LOVE interactive wand-style kitty toys. Captain, in particular, goes nuts for the ones that look like a miniature feather-duster attached to a long wand. He completely de-feathered the first one I gave them by constantly playing, stalking, and fighting with it.

So, as their birthday was last Friday, we bought a few more wand toys for them (which will be doled out in sequence, so they're not all mauled to bits at once). Two of the wand toys are the feather-duster style, and two other wands are adorned with non-feather items that (I hope) will last a bit longer.

The first toy to be pressed into service was one of the feather-wands. The boys love it, of course. They can't get enough of chasing it. And when Captain wants to play, he doesn't even wait for one of us to wave the toy for him. He'll stalk it and "kill" it and carry it around by the bottom of
the featherduster. He looks for all the world like a leopard carrying his kill by the nape of the neck, who's about to haul his prey up a tree. :o)

Last night, I was in our computer room on the second floor, when I heard a bunch of bonking and clunking emanating from the living room downstairs. Wondering what the cats had gotten into THIS time, I made my way down the steps to see what was going on.

At first, I thought Captain was carrying his featherduster around by the "nape" of its "neck", as he was walking all round the front of the living room with his prize. But then when he turned to walk TOWARD me, I saw that he wasn't holding it in his mouth.

Somehow, when he wrestled with the toy, he got the wand all the way through the link on his collar that holds the ID tag. He was walking around with the wand toy installed under his throat, like the pictures of the St. Bernard dogs carrying their cask of brandy on their collar. The
bonking and clunking was being caused by the wand bumping into various pieces of furniture as Captain walked past.

Keeping myself from laughing aloud at this sight quickly became a losing battle. The >snorfle< became a "hee hee", which gave way to belly laughs in short order. I couldn't help it.

An annoyed Captain proceeded to run away from me when I tried to pick him up and disengage the wand toy from his collar. In the process, the handle bonked and clunked against more furniture, which only inspired me to laugh even more. Finally, I got hold of him long enough to haul the toy clear of his collar. By way of apology for laughing about his predicament, I had
a good chase session with him, and waved the toy all over creation so he could stampede in pursuit of it.

But I wasn't laughing AT him. I was laughing WITH him. Honest. :o)