Cat Won't Play? You're Doing it Wrong!

how many times have you heard me say play with your cat play with your cat play with your cat probably a million times at this point if you've been following me at all for any amount of time at the end of the day as many times as i say play with your cat i hear my cat will play so today you lose your excuse because today i'm going to teach you how to get your cat to play because i i want to make sure you hear me all cats will play is it going to look different from cat to cat absolutely and i think one of the things we'll talk about is get to know your cat once you know your cat and we're talking about stimulation level we're talking about age and also just types of toys types of prey what are they interested in and then we can exploit what they're interested in to get play done and also what does successful play look like anyway covering all that so put on your safety belts because you're about to see a whole bunch of jumping and moving around and you don't have to go anywhere you know i'm going to do all the sweating so play with your cat but my cat won't play play with your cat let's go now your cat might not be the most like sort of get up and go cat and we're gonna address that but just so you know our special guest stars today are those cats just so you can see this right now i got a toy hanging out of my back pocket and i've got little joni hanging by my pants so not to say that your cat is going to be that cat for the sake of demonstration these guys make it a little easy if you just look down there you see somebody who's ready to play so when we talk about types of cats i do group them into cats that are like cars you got like a sports car like a maserati and you've got a model t with the maserati just turn the key and they're gone they're off you know but with the model t you gotta crank you just gotta keep cranking you gotta keep cranking and we do that sometimes with things like laser pointers where we'll just get them that engine going and then we transition to an interactive toy but sometimes you just gotta have patience guys you gotta keep cranking and cranking don't let them fake you out if it takes 10 minutes so be it keep cranking one of the first things that you want to do when it comes to play i don't want to treat your cat as just an every cat nor should you there are things that cat with a capital c should go for but obviously that's not going to be your cat so you got to know who they are and one of those things are does your cat prefer to play with something that approximates a mouse or a cricket or something that approximates uh a moth or a bird some cats are actually afraid of a toy that's flying up in the air like that so you just gotta take that moment and figure out who your cat is also i mean when we're talking about problem solving with play it's good to know is your cat a wallflower we're gonna talk about that in a little bit but the idea that your cat is just so scared they won't come out and and explore the world play helps with that are you dealing with inter cat aggression because you've got a bully on your hands we could take the the steam out of the balloon with that play solves so many issues or helps to that you're that you call me about so that's why we're doing this one of the goals of play is cat mojo the very basic of everything i teach and what is mojo well in human terms mojo is that sense of just confidence not confidence that comes from cockiness it's that inner confidence that bubbles up when you know what you're on this planet to do and for cats it's hunting catching killing that's part of what has kept them going through this whole timeline of ours and also confident ownership of territory and nothing and i mean nothing helps to accomplish getting your cat mojo fied turning them into what i call the mojito cat then play play is it you guys plays it play is not just play human beings play is role play for you so that means you're not a human with a stick and a feather you are a bird you are a moth you are a lizard you are a fly you are a mouse you are prey and if you play as prey then your cats will play as predators not because i'm just trying to pimp a product here this is my toy the air prey toy i play with it because i make it and because i love it this is the toy that we're going to be really relying on today there is definitely a place in life for what we call remote toys or independent toys which are you know little balls or crinkles or stuffed mice or whatever it is but for our purposes here when i talk about getting your cat to play that means play in a concerted way that has a beginning a middle and an end and that my dear friends has to be with you interactive play you are on one end of the toy hopefully your cat's on the other end of the toy and that way we can predict the hunt catch kill each cycle here and get your cat truly tired so to my point let's go to it in this case because clearly these guys are into the concept of the moth at the ceiling we gotta play into that we then have to play into at what point are we like okay they're activated they're in they're in they're completely going nuts and then this thing hits the floor now they are so prepped that they're gonna jump on that thing okay i'm running away i'm running away i'm running away i'm running away oh don't catch me don't catch me no no i don't want to die i don't want to die i'm making these guys crazy but the next stop here is we're gonna we've gone fly fly fly fly fly now we hit the ground now the cats may jump on me they may not but we got to be ready for both things so let me show you flying flying flying everybody's watching me fly everybody's watching me fly down okay so now bruce decides he's going to be first in this is what i love you guys i gotta wait for him to drop it brucey was the first in and he puts the the prey in his mouth and then if you heard you couldn't hear him from here but he's doing a little low growl and then he's looking for that place that safe place to go and you know where where am i going to take my prey and eat my prey and he's surrounded by other cats who could threaten that instinct he has so what we do is we then take the toy and we allow them to to just run off a little bit with it keep slack in the line and just go with them he'll get to that point with her find that place he'll settle in look around and then he's going to drop it either because he wants to eat it at that point or whether he's being a cat sadist and he's like are you dead are you or are you pretending and that's when you're off to the races again the moth goes back to the ceiling i am working in a pretty constrained place here but i'm gonna do something that you don't do if you're saying that your cat doesn't play i can bet you don't do this ready oh my i'm making a terrible assumption right now terrible horrible assumption but this is you my cat won't play jackson my cat won't play wait a minute let me get even better this is you my cat won't play jackson i don't know i've tried everything under the sun oh the knicks one where the heck is my pizza this is how i want you to play before you tell me your cat won't play this is what i want you to do ready watch me come on you guys come on come on come on where are we where are we where are we what what what moving moving moving moving moving you see i'm even bending i'm getting down a little bit i'm going up a little bit i am part of this thing i am part of this if you are not running around your house like an idiot if you're not like me at the moment and getting a little winded because i'm completely out of shape then you're not doing your job play mate you're just not doing your job you got stairs in your house use your stairs even if you've got to stand at the bottom of the stairs and drag it back down again use your stairs use heights use whatever you got at your disposal to get your cats tired [Music] so what are we seeing here what we're seeing here is that time and again brucey wins you guys in multi-cat households i am sure you've seen this and now we're going to talk about it the difference between social play and actual play there is definitely a place in your household where all cats get to get together with you and we swing it around and everybody chases and does whatever but you're always going to see something happen you're going to see one cat dominate play which in this case is brucy and then your cats who tend to be a little wall flowery those cats are going to do just what we just saw bramble do who is a wallflower well they sort of stick to the walls they stick under things they're afraid of a lot of stimuli in your house they don't explore much on their own they don't really consider their spaces safe that's a wallflower a scaredy cat and play is invaluable to taking a wallflower getting them off the wall and exploring their best life and in this case if we always play this way bramble is always going to wind up like that which is off to the side watching everybody else play and not having his mojo addressed so what we're going to do is i'm going to finish up with some social play here each cat is going to have their own play time there is so much benefit to that and i know that you feel guilty about that those of you in multi-cat households because you think but everybody should get a chance to play and if i lock somebody in a room they're going to be so sad we're talking about 10 minutes out of their lives it's not a big deal and at the end of the day everyone's going to get to play and and you don't want your wallflower i mean honestly what is going to turn bramble into his most confident mojito self not sitting around watching everybody else play and getting scared every time they jump no it's through this through him learning how to be his raw cat so we have to just everybody else gets to be put away for a second it's bramble's turn everyone gets put away for a second it's now bruce's turn to just get all that energy out of him and then joni gets her turn i know you're saying to yourself is your heart made of stone mr galaxy you're going to take this gorgeous little cute kitten who all she wants out of this world is to play and you're going to put her away yeah that's what i'm going to do so hang tight i know i know i'm a grinch you're a mean one mr jackson okay so here we go i just want you to realize that with a wallflower and bramble can be he's not a straight-up wallflower but he can be that these moves where we just have him go through the sequence where he captures and kills now what i'm going to do my goal is to get him the closest to the middle of the room as i can because this is about instilling confidence this isn't necessarily just about exercise okay so bramble just went from hiding behind a guitar when joni and bruce were out to this which is play play is play whether it's a hundred miles an hour in a three-story jump or following a feather around and getting that that raw cat activated you know both of those things are totally valid and with this boy this is about confidence you guys look at this okay we have a little jump here seeing what he does he does he's not like brucy grabbing the feather and walking off ramble's playing with the string it's all good we're just going to start the the the sequence again and i just i really just want to i want to highlight this again i need to highlight this again that each cat's play needs are different from other cats so as we're seeing with joni and brucey they're just crazy they just want to jump and run and chase and whatever when it comes to bramble it's about that tendency he has in times of high energy to retreat so we can teach him that in those times there's actually a really great reward that comes from coming forward and not just hiding and then look at this look at my boy i'm very proud of you right now i'm very proud of you one of the things to remember is there's going to be different phases of play now again you guys i know that you're gonna be like my cat doesn't jump like that jackson i have a six-year-old cat don't stress i will get to you in a second but there's different phases of play right now he just wants to jump one of the hints i'm going to give you here's a hint for the day when we're talking about jumping don't forget pray moves away pray moves away only the dumbest mouse in the world is going to run into the mouth of your cat so pray moves away we do it unpredictably but at this point it's just making him jump so here's my little tip about jumping because everybody wants to see their cat jump it's the tick-tockiest thing you can possibly do slow-motion cat flying in the air but what you do is away and then when you come back toward him you fly over their head as such here we go i'm going away i'm going away i'm going away i'm going away i'm going away i'm going away now i'm going to go up and i'm going to go up there it is and up and away and up now i want to mix it up it's not all about the air see now watch him right here see now i get to do my little scooches scooch move scooch scooch look at that body this is how prey works you guys slo allowing him to do his little hunty hunty thing i'm gonna come back around and as soon as he comes at me i'm off man remember cats are built for speed and not distance so let me take a second to introduce the concept that i swear by when it comes to cats and play it's called boil and simmer you know the recipe sort of instruction that first bring it to a boil and then let it simmer you know let the flavors come out we can only go so far with that comparison but with cats it's about their energy level and remembering that cats are not necessarily meant to just run around the house for 20 minutes straight unless they're these guys that are running around for 20 minutes straight but that's because they're kittens cats are built for speed and not distance and as such we want to get into the concept of boil and simmer we just saw that brucy has gotten to the point where he is getting worn down so he goes down like this he was panting a little bit we give him about two or three minutes to just do what do what a cat does they go they hunt they stalk they're like i found my prey run run run jump jump jump butterfly butterfly and then i either missed you or i didn't miss you and if i missed you i'm going to get down i'm going to reset this little hunter body and get ready for the next one so in boil and simmer we wait for him to get boiled and then we let him simmer when he tells us he's getting kind of tired heavy breathing lying like this and just fyi a panting cat isn't necessarily a bad thing at all it's just if they pant for more than a couple of minutes then you know that you've overdone it but here look see he's finding this nice cool spot on the floor he's down now is that to say that he won't play again we can probably boil one more time um but we're at a point right now where the the boil happens after a minute so we can call it a day so now that we've gotten the hunting to catch the kill done now it's time to eat so i've got food ready for these guys which i encourage you to do know that that's how this thing ends i mean when you go to create rituals in your house having play lead into food is just a surefire bet time to eat you guys come on ready come on let's eat come on you guys over here over here come on buddy over here come on my love over here there we go and there you have it that is the end of the sequence hunt catch kill eat now we get into groom and sleep rinse and repeat that's the life of your cat i know that seemed like a lot but we've covered the very basics of why your cat won't play and what will help them to play why you should play and the rest i mean so whether it's boil and simmer whether it is knowing who your cat is and knowing the basic techniques whether it's about your job role-playing staying active remember praise interact it's it's as much about bonding as it is about anything else so don't forget it's not about just work it's about play too plays play sometimes it's not just play therapy or work but all of these techniques are going to help you not only get the best out of your cat and and help solve problems but like i said it's going to make life between the two of you that much sweeter all right you guys if you want to see very specific variations on what i did today whether your cat does xyz but doesn't do abc that's all good i want to hear it that's what the comments are for and uh in the meantime don't forget to subscribe to the channel because the subscriptions let you know jackson's got another play video coming out i get to watch him run around like an idiot great now you get to run around like an idiot jackson mckellen won't play my cat won't play all right light loving mojo to you [Music] meow

Channel: Jackson Galaxy

Views: 415,601

Keywords: Cat won't play, jackson galaxy, cats, my cat from hell, animal planet, cat whisperer, cat guy, cat guy animal planet, cat expert, cat advice, cat health, cat behavior, cat breeds, types of cats, cat care, cat training, cats and kittens, cat psychology, taking care of a cat, cat behavior problems, jackson galaxy videos, cat daddy, playtime, get your cat to play, my cat won't play, bored cat, Cat wont play, cat wont play, cat wont play with toys, cat wont play by himself

Id: SMPjoNg3nv8

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2022