Mary Allen
Unfortunately, cats can also get dementia, so it’s important to keep them mentally fit from the start. The following tips reveal how you can support your cat so that it remains mentally young for a long time.
To keep your cat mentally fit, play with it every day and challenge it with tricky brain teasers. The earlier you start the better, but you can also keep old cats busy to keep them young on the inside for as long as possible.
Exercise Regimen
Ideally, you’ll begin the daily “exercise regimen” as soon as your cat comes into your home. Kittens and young cats tend to be more playful than adult cats, so it’s easier to get them involved. With older cats, you usually need a little more patience to get them excited about playing and to keep them mentally fit. It’s still possible.
Play With the Cat Every Day
Especially if you establish the daily play session as a routine, even an older cat will get involved in playing. You can also make toys yourself or switch between the cat toys more often so that it doesn’t get boring. A paper ball that rustles nicely or an old sock with catnip, for example, can wake up tired cat senses. But also hunting games are usually a great pleasure for your cat.
Challenging Furry Friends Mentally
To keep your cat mentally fit, you should provide them with challenges. For example, you can set up small hiding places for food anywhere in the house so that your kitty can go on a “treasure hunt”. Or you let them play with food toys. These can be balls with holes that you fill with treats or puzzle games in which your cat has to complete certain tasks before it can get the treats. A cute and easy-to-implement idea is a cardboard maze-like in the next video. All you have to do is cut holes in discarded boxes and stack them side by side.
Teach New Tricks From Time to Time
While training cats is considered more difficult than training dogs, you can still teach your cat a trick or two to keep them mentally fit. These can be quite simple things, for example, it can learn its name or the command “come”.