The Playful Cat: Unlocking Your Feline's Inner Hunter | The Feline Wellness Summit with Dr. Rachel Geller

 Welcome to the Cat Dad show. My name is Scott Colby, and we're going to talk all about play for your cat, which I love. I'm going to share with you a clip of my interview with Dr. Rachel Geller. Gosh, she talked all about interactive play. This interview That I did with her has changed the way that I interact and play with my two cats, Nico and Milo, but Dr.

Rachel, she's the founder and president of all cats all the time, which is a nonprofit dedicated to preventing the surrender and abandonment of cats by helping shelters and cat owners who cannot otherwise afford to do so access. Cat behavior counseling for free of charge. Uh, she's a cat behavior specialist.

Um, and in this clip, I asked her, How can interactive play with a fishing pole or a wand toy completely transform a cat's behavior and enrich their lives? Dr. Rachel was a special guest for my feline wellness summit. If you would like to listen to this entire interview, as well as interview with 20 other feline wellness experts, you can grab a free ticket to the summit at felinewellnesssummit.

com. But for now, enjoy this clip with Dr. Rachel.

Yes. You know, so many people, when they think of playing with their cat, they throw a bunch of solo toys onto the floor.

You know,

they throw some fuzzy mice. A lot of my clients have like that big basket of toys that's sitting in the corner and they throw them on the floor. Well, and then their cats kind of just maybe sniff at them or walk away. And people say to me, my cat does not like

to play.

Well, the problem is with the solo toy is your cat needs to be both the predator and the prey.

And that is completely non realistic to your cat. And it's also not very much fun. So, as you said, we want to use a fishing pole or a wand type toy. And the reason we want to use one of those types of toys is that we can manipulate the wand or the fishing pole toy to mimic prey. So when we play with a cat, it is supposed to simulate a hunt.

We're supposed to replicate what the cat would go through when the cat is hunting for her prey. So clearly the prey is not going to sit motionless on the ground like that fuzzy mouse that you threw on the floor, right? Prey is going to move in unpredictable ways. It's going to be up, it's going to be down, it's going to be to the side, it's going to scurry away.

It's going to hide. And when you use a fishing pole or a wand toy, you can mimic all of these motions. You can Pretend you are the prey and this will make it much more realistic for your cat to really trigger that prey drive and chase after something that resembles prey.

Yeah. Uh, and the other problem with those other toys that you mentioned, I have a lot of those and they're under my sofa.

You know, they get batted around under the sofa, under the refrigerator. And they're gone. Or it's like, I have to get them out with a broom. And it's, again, it's not very interactive.

Understanding the Hunting Sequence

So, you mentioned this So, we're going to talk about the hunting sequence. Can you walk us through the hunting sequence and how it mirrors a cat's natural instincts?

Yes. So, first, you want to, as I said, you really want to mimic how play, how prey would act. So, I see a lot of people, they get the wand toy and they dangle it and right in front of the cat's face. Well, that is not going to trigger a cat's. I've done that. So many people do that and it's completely unrealistic.

There is no prey. That's going to fly into your cat's face and put itself wildly about. So prey runs away from the cat, not toward the cat. So we really wanna trigger that prey drive. And the way to trigger your cat's prey drive is to move the toy. Realistically like prey. So we get that prey drive triggered, you know, we've moved the toy in an enticing manner.

Maybe we let the toy sit a little bit. 'cause some cats like to size up the situation and plot their strategy and figure out what they're going to do. And it's also, again, realistic to the cat because when the toy. stops moving, you're mimicking prey. Prey might play dead to try to trip the cat. The prey might lose its stamina.

So being motionless for a little bit is okay, too. So we trigger that prey drive. And then again, we want to move the Toy like prey. So think about a mouse, think about a bird, um, scurrying around, hiding behind furniture, being up, going down, moving around in an unpredictable manner. Sometimes you're fast, sometimes you're slow.