Despite us having hundreds of DVDs, three cable boxes, and thousands of channels to skip through, Ron and I do find that a bit of cat play can make for quite an entertaining evening.

Chuckles and Ricky both love strings, but they tend to play differently (as anyone with multiple felines knows). Ricky likes to dash back and forth, never really wanting to actually catch the string. Chuckles, on the other hand, goes for broke and he and Ron often get in a tug match, with Ron usually cheating and distracting Chuckles or squashing him behind the ottoman, in order to get him to release his vice-like bite.

Ron can also get Chuckles to do amazing leaps into the air or onto the couch (or off). We do find that he is often so intently focused on getting and keeping the string that he falls off furniture without a clue (Chuckles, I mean – for the most part). We also found that if we place the ottoman that has wheels on the wood floor, then get Chuckles to leap onto it, he’ll happily go flying across the room, not unlike Snoopy as the Red Baron. Fun for the whole family.

In addition to strings and balls, they love treats. Though Ron actually had to convince Chuckles of their goodness, who, prior to this, had no interest in them. Now he’s quite the obnoxious pest any time we walk into the kitchen or go near the treat drawer. He still doesn’t fully get the whole concept of taking a treat from our hand though. Ricky gets it immediately, and sometimes even tries to butt in to take Chuckles’. Chuckles tends to wuffle it a bit, rub his front teeth on it, then much like “Insert tab A into slot B,” we slide the treat into his mouth like a reverse Pez dispenser. Yum!

Robin back home kindly sent us some great gourmet treats for the felines to try. One of them was less like the fish-shaped crunchy treats they’re used to and more like bits of torn chicken (ewww). It took some added wuffles for Chuckles to get this concept, but Ron was eventually able to slide the treats in without issue. What a clever boy.