Marlene's Pet Shop

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I thought my indoor cat had a great life. Then I watched him suffer alone while I was at work. It started when I got a pet camera after we had a break-in two streets over. Nothing serious, just enough to make me want to keep an eye on things while I was away. I put it in the living room, hoping to catch a few cute moments during my lunch break. The first day I checked the feed, my heart sank. I expected to see Milo having fun, exploring, playing with his toys. Instead, he just sat there, staring blankly at the door. Milo was thrilled when a blue jay came to the window feeder out front, but the second it flew away, he went back to walking around just looking sort of checked-out. He nudged a plastic ball once, but then he gave up. Day after day, it was the exact same heartbreaking sight. He wasn't sleeping peacefully. He was just waiting. When I walked through the door every evening, he burst into wild excitement. He would run to me, cry for love, and race around the room in desperate energy. Suddenly, those happy evening moments broke my heart. That burst of joy was all the pent-up loneliness releasing the second I came home. I told myself cats sleep a lot. Everyone knows that. But once I’d seen the pattern, I couldn’t really unsee it. I thought I was a good cat parent. I gave him everything I thought he needed to be happy. But the camera showed me the sad truth. He was understimulated. That guilt crushed me for days. So I bought every toy I could find to make him happy again. I filled the apartment with them. Robotic mice. Automatic lasers. Puzzle feeders. The list goes on. But checking the camera always showed me Milo alone on the couch. I felt so frustrated. Like, what else am I supposed to give you? Then something stupid happened. A package showed up one afternoon with another toy I’d ordered for Milo. He ignored the toy. But the second I dropped the empty cardboard box on the floor, he jumped inside it. At first I rolled my eyes. Of course. Another $40 cat toy ignored so he could play with the box it came in. But this time I actually watched him while he made a mockery of my choices. He jumped onto one side and the cardboard buckled underneath him. That made him pounce again. He grabbed the edge with his front paws, kicked it with his back legs, bit into the corner, then threw his whole body against it. Every time he attacked, the box changed. It bent. Collapsed. Shifted underneath his weight. And every time it changed, Milo had to change what he was doing too. He kept coming back to it for almost an hour. And then something even more interesting happened. After a few days, he had completely crushed it. The sides were flattened. The cardboard didn’t spring or buckle anymore. It looked like he killed it. When he came back to it, he swatted it once, lost interest, and walked away. I felt so stupid because it was so obvious. He needed something like that cardboard box, because that was the most fun I'd seen him have with anything. He wasn’t just playing with it. He was wrestling and kicking it with his whole body, almost like he was trying to take down prey. Only this was cardboard. And it was cheap so it didn’t last more than a day or two. At the same time, I remembered that so many toys claim to “satisfy your cat’s primal hunting instincts.” That cardboard box clearly was. That’s why he got so obsessed with it. I used to roll my eyes when I heard toy companies say things like “Feels like hunting real prey,” because, yeah sure. Toys would satisfy him long enough to find the cardboard box they came in and play with that. I started to fantasize about filling my living room with cardboard boxes. But then I remembered Portland. I was supposed to fly out in two weeks to visit my brother Mark. Normally, I would’ve thought nothing of it. I stayed at his place twice this year already with zero guilt. But now I had the camera. And suddenly all I could picture was seven straight days of Milo sulking around that apartment without me. Except this time I wasn’t coming home that evening. I'd have to leave him for a whole week. That thought made my stomach turn. I knew he would be safe. But after seeing what his normal workday looked like, “safe” suddenly didn’t feel like enough. I had two weeks before Portland. And I became completely obsessed with figuring out how to make those seven days feel less empty before I left. For the next few days, I researched obsessively. Not just toys anymore. I was trying to find something that recreated what Milo had loved about that cardboard box. Something he could pounce on and have it shift underneath him. A few nights before my trip, I called my brother Mark in Portland and started complaining about all of it. Mark fosters cats, so his house is basically a revolving door of completely different personalities. Kittens. Older cats. Shy cats. Absolute maniacs. Before I could even finish explaining what I was looking for, he stopped me. “Have you tried Kitty Kurlz?” I had no idea what he was talking about. He told me how almost every foster cat he took in would go bananas over this thing. The owners were calling it cat crack. But Mark started calling it a “prey-scratcher.” My first thought was that it looked ridiculous. It was this flexible donut-shaped thing that moves whenever cats pounce on it. I was actually amazed when he showed me pictures of his foster cats playing with it. When they pounced, it shifted underneath their weight. When they grabbed and pulled, it bent and resisted. There was even a bell ball running through the middle, so they could chase something while wrestling and scratching the whole thing at the same time. It looked like an accordion when Mark stretched it out. And the ends were magnetic. He showed me how to connect two together and completely change the size and shape. Mark explained that you can resize it to mimic different prey sizes, depending on what your cat prefers to attack. He said his foster cats reacted differently depending on how he set it up. I was amazed. No batteries. No motors. Nothing flashy. Just something that changed depending on what the cat did to it. Mark knew I still wasn’t completely convinced. After everything I had bought, my only thought was: Is this just going to become one more useless thing taking up space? Then Mark sent me pictures of the three foster cats he had at the time. I started to become more convinced. He told me almost every foster cat that came through his house went bananas for the thing. Okay. My flight was only a few days away, so I ordered Kitty Kurlz that day. When it arrived, I put it down in the living room and stepped back. Milo walked over. He just stared at it for like 10 seconds. Then I flicked the little bell ball that runs through a track in the middle and he immediately pounced on the whole thing. Then he did it again, but harder. A minute later he was halfway on top of it, grabbing one side with his front paws and kicking at the other with his back legs. I didn't have to trigger it—he was happy all on his own. That was the part that got me. Milo played obsessively with it before I left. But I still didn’t completely trust it. I’d watched him get obsessed with new things before. Then two days later, they were just furniture. So when I flew to Portland, part of me was still expecting the novelty to disappear the second I wasn’t there. The first afternoon at Mark’s place, I opened the camera app. My stomach tightened before the feed even loaded. I expected to see Milo on the couch or watching the door. Instead, he was in the middle of the living room wrestling with Kitty Kurlz. By himself. And he was still obsessed with it. And I was hundreds of miles away. This was exactly the moment I had been terrified of two weeks earlier. So I watched him for maybe a minute, then I closed the app. For the first time since I bought that camera, I didn’t feel guilty putting my phone away. Seeing my sweet cat joyful and engaged restored my peace of mind completely. Because Kitty Kurlz wasn’t just another toy sitting in the room. It gave him something to actually interact with. Something that moved differently depending on what he did. Something that resisted him. Something that fought back. If your indoor cat spends most of the day waiting for you, don’t just give them more stuff. Give them something that fights back. PS — Mark has fostered over 30 cats all in all this year. Only two didn’t care much about Kitty Kurlz, because they were too chonky to care about anything. But I almost died of laughter when he sent me a photo of a 23lb tabby who was sleeping curled up inside Kitty Kurlz. His fat rolls were pouring over the side like muffin tops over a pair of tight jeans. I told Mark he should get him to chase the bell ball more often. PPS– Mark later told me that chonky cat actually became more active since being around Kitty Kurlz. He still can’t move very fast but he sure as hell is trying.