I promised an update on Buddy and his new Floppy Fish toy, confident he would get over his trepidation and start playing with it eventually. More than half a dozen attempts later I’ve succeeded only in making him more skittish.
Our readers will recall Buddy got his first look at his new toy last week, and he was terrified of it.
He stepped back warily as I flipped the on switch and placed the flopping fish on the floor. When it stopped thrashing — which it does after a few seconds to save battery life, relying on a motion sensor to tell it to move again — Buddy slowly, cautiously edged his way over.
With a wary eye on the toy fish, Buddy gave it a nudge with his paw, then jumped back as it sprang to life again, making a mechanical SWISH-SWISH sound as it thrashed.
I tried to get him interested in the fish the next day and again the following night. It was late. Buddy hopped up to the coffee table and padded over to me, nuzzling me with his cheeks in hello.
He’s relaxed, I thought. Good opportunity to try the fish again!
I should have kept the power off. He wasn’t playing with the fish, but he wasn’t hissing at it or running away.
Stupidly I allowed impatience to get the better of me. I switched it on, and he freaked out and ran away. After that he wouldn’t even go near the thing even as it sat dormant. He probably thinks it’s like Ssscat, the motion-triggered compressed air spray that startles cats to keep them off kitchen counter tops, tables and other surfaces.
Come to think of it, maybe I can find a use for the fish yet. If I want to protect a fragile item on a flat surface, all I need to do is place the fish in front of it and Bud will never go near the thing. 🙂
Pain In The Bud 
Bella the cat has one of these, her reaction was opposite to ‘Buddy the magnificent’, utterly underwhelming, she looked at it, looked me with my expectant Dad look, looked at it again, this continued a while going back and forth, then she retired to her favourite napping spot and ignored it. It now sits in her (large) toy box along with many, many other expensive and cheap toys. The only toy with any lasting power is a small woolly mouse that does travel around the house with her and gets a proper kicking every now and again… cats…
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Our furry friends really are weirdos. Did Bella ever play with the fish or did it find a permanent home in the toy chest? At least she wasn’t a big wimp like Buddy!
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Bella looked at it twitching around, then at me then back and forth eye contact for a while then completely ignored it, it now sits in the toy chest ( she has made it clear that its never to be mentioned again!!!)
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Poor Buddy, that weird fish is his nemesis. Oh, that Scccat thingy: we call it a can of hisses, the cats detest spray cans.
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Indeed, and the Ssscat works by motion sensor as well, so the cats learn it doesn’t matter if their humans are home or not, the area where the Ssscat is is off limits.
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I wish I had had one of those things when my cats were roaming my kitchen counters, foraging to their heart’s content.
On the other hand, it would be just my luck that they wouldn’t respond like Buddy at all: probably they would be drawn to the counter to see what was going on.
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Yes, well being a wimp like Buddy doesn’t come easily, you know. Only through hard work and being dedicated to freaking out about everything. 🙂 It’s weird because he was so fearless as a kitten and he’s still a very outgoing cat.
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