Do you like to play? Your answer might depend on your age, huh? Or maybe, on what you would consider as “playing.” Gee whiz, this question might be more complicated than I first thought!
A kitty friend once told me that it’s only the miniature humans that get into this kind of activity. And she told me too that the little females play in different ways and with different things than the males. This last part I can confirm from my own careful observations of the situation.
Us cats tend to not have such dramatic gender distinctions in our playtime habits, especially when we’re young. The males hang out with the females and we all get together for some mutually super exciting experiences, like bouncing around energetically in our very limited territories during those first critical months in particular. Doing so, we’re always under the watchful and protective eyes of our mamas, as you can imagine.
It’s true that the oldest adult male of our kind normally dominates and rules when living in a clan, especially when he’s the biggest and the strongest, while the females usually have a more supportive role. But we don’t go to extremes on these differences.
You see, there are basically very few he-or-she differentiations when it comes to having a good time, which allows us to hang out with those who we get along with the best or who happen to be available for some entertainment at any given moment.
And for us cats, our types of play don’t really change with age so much, but how much we do it may decrease, and dramatically so, when we get up there in years. For example, whether we are young or old, a soft, little mouse toy is often highly appreciated since we can bat it around the rooms with our paws, and then go chase it and pick it up in our mouths to carry it around like a prized catch. Hey, that’s great fun at times!
It‘s true though that some of my fellow kitties are a lot more or a lot less playful in general than others, regardless of their age. I myself am of the energetic type and really get into all different kinds of these activities, like grasshopper hunting, leaf pouncing, string attacking, flower batting, and many other options that can be begun on my own.
In this case, I don’t think us felines and humans are so different since there are those of both our species who prefer a more calm and serious existence and others who are into fun stuff the majority of the time. Whatever is good for you, I say. It’s probably best to let each individual or kitty find his or her own comfort level in terms of what they do in their daily activities. Sound good?
Speaking of the domestic cats more in general, our playful behavior is often related to the mimicking of hunting skills, especially for the younger ones. In this way, they can learn at an early age how to sneak up on, capture, and kill prey. This would be normal for many of us mammal types.
Because of our natural attraction to and skill for hunting, this is why we often enjoy it so much when you give us a gift of a furry, little mouse toy like I was just talking about. The deal is, it resembles a real, edible objective.
But I should let you know too that we tend to get bored easily and quickly with just one toy option to chase after and dominate, so it would be quite nice of you if you’d reward us with different items of this type, okay?
We also commonly take part in play fighting, although doing this as adults is generally seen only among brothers and sisters. Doing that with other non-blood-line companions could sometimes be misunderstood by one of the players and turn into a true hissing battle. Yeah, that’s bad news, so we stay away from that.
This last activity is very important for us, as you may suspect, since it prepares us for possible future dangerous encounters so that we can develop the defensive and offensive abilities necessary to protect ourselves and our territories when the situation arises. How about that for some playful practicality!