My cat will play fetch for as long as I throw her little mouse toy. She’ll even let me throw it from bed and she’ll bring it right back up for me to throw again.
Another one!
One of mine does! His name is Porkchop and he will only fetch and return plastic water bottle caps.
Mine will only fetch the mice, she once brought us a real mouse in the middle of the night.
“Look, I fetched!”
My cat does
Mine did as a kitten. He’d even bring the toy back to throw again!
At some point he stopped bringing the toy back so now we don’t play fetch. We play throw once and stare.
One of ours did that too, she also grew out of it.
Our dog doesn’t even play fetch. :(
Same for ours, but we think it’s cause she learned we’d go get it even if she didn’t.
I’ve seen other comments pointing their cats only doing it when kittens, but I am happy to report that my 3 and a half year old boy does still play it. I throw aluminium foil balls and he loves playing soccer with them and giving them back to me so I can throw them again
Mo fetches and brings up random sticks like a dog.
So cute! My Maine Coon played fetch too. He preferred the shiny little balls of tinsel, but would also play with toy mice. I never taught him, he just brought me a toy one day and stood on my chest so I threw it to get him off me (he was big) and he brought it back. After a few times doing this I realized I was playing fetch with him and we did it his whole life 😊
Apparently ppl here hate reddit, but for those who don’t, r/catscarryingstuffies has kitties that play fetch fairly often. So, yes, it happens, but I don’t think it’s too common
I had a cat that played fetch. When he was young fellow, he’d fetch and bring the toy back to me. Eventually he’d only bring the toy most of the way back, and I had to cover the remaining distance. Then he’d bring the toy back some of the way back, and it eventually turned into him running to where the toy ended up, sitting down next to it, and looking at me like “Okay, I found where you tossed the toy, now come over and get it so we can do this again”. He still loved to play, but it seemed he kind of outgrew the fetch thing.
Mine loves paying fetch, but she doesn’t really fetch, she just runs after it and gives it some slaps, than looks at me and meows until I get it and throw it again
I know of two belonging to two separate friends that would fetch.
Wagler was particularly good at it and would fetch just about everything, bring it right to you, and bite you for your troubles. This was 25 years ago and I haven’t kept in touch. I suspect Wagler is no longer with us.
Honey demands wadded up paper balls to fetch and adorably half-asses it getting either distracted and playing with one instead, or just wandering off and only remembering later that he was doing it.
I grew up with a load of cats and have never had one that was remotely interested.
Note: if you cat loves to play catch that is awesome but also many cats if anything love the opposite of catch even more.
A strong predator drive in cats is to want to pick up and drag off a new kill. You can bring this into play by letting your cat drag off their cat toy when they get it.
Don’t play tug of war with your cat, they aren’t like dogs they don’t generally get into that. They want to pounce, kill and triumphantly drag their prey off up a tree or into a hideout or something. Integrate that last beat into your play with your cat and they will have a lot more fun!
Even better, reward your cat with praise when they stalk off with the cat toy they just pounced on, give them a quick scratch or back rub as they walk away with a proud lion gate and then success flop. This will make it WAYYY easier to rescue… or cleanup an actual animal your cat has gotten because they won’t connect you with being near them after a successful “kill” as frustrating, stressful or unnatural.
If you do it enough with an indoor cat they will begin to associate a successful hunt with you hanging around, and that makes handling cats when they go into hunt mode way easier.
TL;DR praise your cat for hiding the body they will love you more for it and let you cleanup murder scenes easier because of it.
I have had a couple cats who do this! It’s adorable. It does mean I’ve woken up with cat toys in my bed, though.
Gotta get that 3am fetch session in!
My wife trained one of our cats to play fetch just a few days ago! She absolutely loves it now (the cat, not my wife. Though my wife does still have fun with it).
My youngest cat did when she was little… but has basically stopped a couple years ago. I think it’s because she’s bigger and I can’t throw the crinkle balls far enough. lol I got a gun that shoots little felt balls, but she doesn’t like those balls (but my oldest cat loves to walk around with one of those balls in her mouth while singing us an opera).
