PRODUCT REVIEW and MYSTERY: The Case of the Neko Flies String

I would love to win a Neko Flies today for my foster kittens. As you know socialization is a big part of fostering and I have been able to "win" over the most scared cat with time spent playing with them and getting them to trust me. I can just imagine some of the kittens I take in having a blast flying through the air trying to "catch" there prey.

I have a new adopted 4 mos old kitten that seems to think hard plastic is gourmet food.  I have to keep a vigilant eye on him and keep packing things in boxes that might get him into trouble!  He also thinks jewelry--especially earrings--is worn just so he can rip it out and eyeglasses?  Well, of course, they are there for him!  Ive been making and buying toys to keep him occupied.  These flies look like they might be just the teaser he would love.

I have a CH cat who adores playing. She brings me such joy when I see her bunny hop around after her laser light or other toys. I would love to see what she does with a Neko toy.

thanks!

So a week or so after my 3 year old's birthday, my very fluffy main coon cat named Tiffany jumps up on the couch next to me and I see she has something stuck in her 'fluffy pants' (long back leg hair). She gets the occasional cling-on, but this was something else, as I could see it was white. So I pull on it thinking maybe a cling-on has picked something up with it, only to hear her yowl loudly. She jumps down/I finish pulling to reveal that I just pulled about a foot of balloon string right out of her bottom. I was horrified to be holding a length of baby pink ribbon covered in cat poo. It was quite the mystery since we had no idea how she got it until we later found a popped balloon carcass in our daughters bedroom, that she has brought up there unbeknownst to us. It was missing a good length of its string, which was what I apparently found in Tiffany later. I feel SOO lucky that Tiffany passed the string without any issues. She might have gotten sick and we would have had no idea why. Scary thought. So glad the DOOD is ok!

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If you'd like your very own Neko Flies: Foxifur Kittenator with Rod, simply leave a comment in this post to enter. Tell me what's the weirdest thing your cat has eaten or just give me a good reason why you should win. Make it funny, entertaining, creative.

Our youngest, Baby Su, loves lemon sandwich creme cookies.  Because everyone who knows anything about cats will tell you cats HATE anything to do with citrus, I thought this was a fluke at first.  Many lemon cookie bits later, I know it isn't.  That's my funny, entertaining and creative bizarro cat-eating-weird-stuff story, and I'm stickin' to it.  Do you think Baby Su would get back on the right track if she had a Neko Flies Foxifur Kittenator with Rod?  *I do* ;)

Glad your story ended well, Robin!  It's always a relief to see foolishly-ingested items come out one way or the other!  My two loves have in the past eaten that metallic tinsel toy, which has passed through slightly less colorful than it passed in.  They've also put 'hits' out on Da Bird, which often came out of a play session either dissheveled or snapped in half!  My boy cat has always tried to get my goat by chewing on electrical plugs (not plugged in, but nonetheless destroyed), and recently, at age 13, has begun to pluck the glasses off of my face when I haven't jumped out of bed quickly enough to fetch his breakfast.  Both he and his sister have become kind of complacent upper-middle-aged cats, and would surely adore one of these amazing toys to re-ignite their inner kitten.  Thanks for the chance to win, and good luck to us all!

Working as a vet tech, I knew the dangers of cats swallowing dental floss. So what do I do? I floss my teeth and toss it in the waste basket. My cat, Lucky, who is frolicking along the rainbow bridge as we speak, LOVED to sit on the counter and watch me floss my teeth. Sometimes he would even let me floss his teeth, too. So one day as I'm getting ready for work, I see Lucky pawing at his mouth in the bathroom. I call his name and he turns to look at me and he has the same dental floss I just used danging out of one side of his mouth. I instantly had flashes of Lucky at the vet either being sedated to have the floss unwrapped from his tongue or worse, surgery to have it removed from his intestines. I put professional baseball players to shame in that moment as I dove into the bathroom to scoop Lucky up and remove the floss before he had a chance to swallow it.

Words of wisdom I learned from this experience: Flush the Floss.

As for a good reason as to why I should win, well, I've got three of the cutest, fuzziest reasons ever. But that doesn't make me any different than anyone else who follows your page. But! My kitten, Conchita Bobbita, would no doubt LOVE a Neko Flyer toy. I am convinced Lucky picked her out especially for me and set her in my path, and sometimes I think a little bit of him got reincarnated into her just so he could keep watching over me (and to make sure I continue to flush my floss).

Hi Robin...   long ago, in the pre-rescue days (when folks thougt I was crazy because I had two cats) I had a Maine Coon I'd purchased as a kitten (hey, we grow and learn).  He was actually the poster boy for not buying a cat that's his own 3rd cousin - he was not too bright.  I was scrubbing a greasy frying pan with a Brillo pad, set the pan in the kitchen sink to soak for a few minutes, and when I returned to the kitchen - no pad.  Could it be?  Nah, he couldn't be that stupid, could he?  As if to answer me, he made eye contact and horked up some steel wool. 

I peered at the X-ray on the light-up thingy and asked, "is that his stomach?"  The emergency vet (please scan your Mastercard to gain entry to the lobby) scowled and replied - "no, that's the Brillo pad, blown up inside his stomach."  They said he was going to die, too involved for surgery, nothing could be done, but pack him full of Metamucil and hope for the best.

Good thing about not being too bright - HE didn't know he was supposed to die.  Over the course of the next week, I went through an entire container of Metamucil and collected an entire Brillo pad from his stool in the litter box.  He lived 13 more years - and I never, ever again walked away from the sink when I was doing dishes.

Quite a few years back at Christmas time I had purchased some toys for the two cats I had then.  A couple of the toys were the ones that were on an elasticized string so the toy could be tied to something and bounce when a cat played with it.  It being Christmas I had unwrapped the toys and just set them aside to unwind the string later.  I did not put the toys up high because I did not think they would be bothered where I put them.  I was wrong.

A little later in the day, I reached for the toys because I was going to set them up for play.  I picked up one and the elasticized string was missing.  I looked all over for it.  I could not figure out what had happened to it.  A little while later I found it still wrapped as it was on the card with the toy.  It had been vomited up by one of the two cats, probably the male.  Apparently he chewed it off the toy and swallowed it whole.  That scared the living daylights out of me.

To this day string is a no-no around my current cats.  I don't even discard dental floss in a waste basket.  I put it in a secure plastic bag out of the reach of my cats.  I do this because one of my cats would like to get his paws on it.  And I don't buy those dangling toys any more.

And, by the way Robin, I love you blogs and all the pictures you post.  You tell a good story.  Thanks!!

My cat Domino would always eat the Christmas tinsel off the tree.  It never occurred to me at the time that putting that on there might be harmful, and frankly, I never caught her doing it, so I didn't realize it was happening until the litterbox became very holiday "festive"!  Needless to say, we had tinsel- free trees after that.  Fortunately, she never seemed to have a problem with her sparkly diet!

I love your journals with your furbabies. I had a similar experience several years ago. My boy, Chewbacca was always underfoot while I was fixing lunch. I decided to distract him with a bologna wrapper, the thin red plastic around one slice. I tossed it on the floor, finished making the sandwich,  turned around and it was gone! Instant panic. Just as you did, we searched every crack and crevice. Call to the Vet, give Peroxide to the cat to induce vomiting.  Never found it. Not even in the litter box. Chewbacca lived another 10 years. I lost him this year to renal disease.  

Dear Robin - been there, done that!  I have actually had more than one cat with odd eating issues.  Maggie, my very first kitten as an adult managed to get at my sister's embroidery floss when she was only 9 weeks old.  I had no idea, she just was not acting like herself.  Thank god I listened to my mothering instincts and brought her to the vet.  She had a strangulated intestine and needed emergency surgery.  One expensive surgery (and one call from the vet to see if I wanted him to spay her "while he was in there") later and she was thankfully ok and my sister was minus one hobby.

Our other cat, Fidget, did not like any typcial cat loving people food.  You could leave tuna, chicken, steak, etc out but you better not take your eye off your salad!  She as a very nervous cat and would often run around scared at any new sound.  We would often see her running in terror only to stop short if she passed a salad.  :)

Then when my mother develop sudden cat allergies, I had to temporarily absorb her cat into my house until I could find an appropriate, adult only, only pet household for her.  The only problem with that is that she had stressed induced Pica.  Pica is a mental condition that causes people and animals to crave eating non food items.  Her item of choice?  Paper.  If any paper was left unsupervised, she would eat it whole.  So for the six months it took us to find her an appropriate home, we have to put all our papers where Cleo could not get to them. Try listening to a 4 year old explain to grandma why all her coloring book had to be sealed away in rubbermaid because of the cat.

Why should I win the Neko Flies?  Because I love Neko Flies!  Or my cats do.  ;)  I have one right now that I use with my three foster failures (shelter "rejects" that no one else would want due to health or behvior issues) and have to keep it locked away in a closet so they don't get to it when I am not around. 

But I would really love to have another one to use with my foster kittens.  I primarily foster feral kittens or very sick failure to thrive kittens.  And I truly believe that the bond they form with me while playing (or learning to play in the case of the ferals) is what makes the difference between life and death for many of them.  Since so many of my fosters are "long shots" in the terms of placement because of weird health issues and one of my owned cats has a compromised immune system, I am very careful not to share toys with the fosters and my owned cats.  Most often I am spending all my "extra" money on different types of cat food to try to entice them to eat so there is none left over for an slightly more expensive (but totally worth the cost) toy like Neko Flies.

My current foster, Anya who is a 3 month old feral kitten recovering from a leg abscess, hopes we win!

I would love to win this for my two cats.  Haven't seen any green poop lately, so it would be interesting to have some ;)  

My cats have been pretty good about not eating things, but I keep all potentially dangerous toys and plants away from them.  I did have a Persian, Shaton, that swallowed nearly a whole string of curly ribbon once on a xmas package.  I pulled and pulled and was shocked at how much had gone down already.  Never left any curly ribbon on anything out again, and was very lucky I caught her in the act.

Hi Robin,

I don't have one particular silly cat story. Charlie and Lucy manage to keep me entertained by their silliness most of the time.  Charlie reminds me a lot of the DOOD, and when you mentioned him not being the sharpest pencil in the box, I had to laugh! I'm afraid I'm becoming the crazy cat lady, carrying more photos of my cats on my phone than I have of my grown kids! I know Charlie and Lucy would love the Neko Flies toy. We seem to be a little bored with our Cat Dancer and our Feline Flyer, not to mention our fuzzy mousies, bouncy balls, etc! We do love our lazer pointer mouse toy, but could use some variety (:!

xo,

Barb, Charlie and Lucy

My cats really haven't eaten anything weird (knock on wood), but I've had my eye on Neko Flies for awhile.  I haven't yet gotten around to buying one though. Holly and Figaro need a Neko Flies toy because it would appeal to both of their hunting instincts. Figaro loves to chase toys on the ground, while Holly is more of an "air hunter".  Would love to get one of these to enjoy more interactive play time with my kitties!

Hi Robin, 

Yes - that is how to say his name "KEITH!" because he usually has some contraband in his mouth. And he knows it! As soon as I notice something (ANYTHING!) missing, I'll look & call as he runs out of my reach.

He has eaten: some/all of strings & elastic on toys; not one, not two, but THREE pairs of my flip-flops have BIG holes, holes that match the ones in a garden kneeling pad I used for excersizing. Add to his list a couple of pipecleaners, even the two that I had twisted together to keep him from eating, rubber bands (Even when we hid them, he fished 'em out of the drawer!), about 24 inches of the pull-cord from a Venetian blind, bites in EVERY bag of WBCL I bring in ... oh, and half of the band from my granddaughter's brand-new, white Crock. (The rubber shoes - "Crocks")

Although he hasn't actually eaten (not from lack of trying), my two pairs of Crocks have multiple bite-marks. Also bitten: any cardboard in the house, parts of a wood plant stand, several wood baskets, a couple of magazines, AND my senior cat's EAR! Yup! Por Celerie had to wear The Cone-of-Shame for almost a month while the (hole clear-through!) her ear healed. 

And yes, I DO play with toys with him! But he catches toys TO EAT THEM! He, and his "sister" were left-overs from a feral colony I cleaned up near our house. I have a softness for orange male cats. THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT! So, very different! His "sister" (aunt, if you follow the family history) is my Foster-fail, and a real sweet-heart. She plays fetch! Only cat I've had who repeats the game untill I get tired of it! And, she throws mousies - for herself!

But KEITH! really NEEDS a "special" toy!

Please! (So sorry, I'm so wordy. But I know I left off some of KEITH'S edibles.)

Penny

I have a cat who as a kitten, rifled through my handbag one day and found my bikini! He ate almost a quarter of the string from the top of my bikini! I found a pile of fresh cat barf and found part of the string therein. But inches were still missing! So 2 trips to the vet ER, 3 enemas later and thousands of dollars going towards the vet's new summer home, and he ended up being fine in the end! And his 'end' ended up fine as well! Ugh! You'd think he would have learned his lesson (3 enemas, c'mon man!) but he still tries to go through my pocketbooks, perhaps looking for some nice tasty accessories?? lol

I'd like to replace his cravings with a cool Neko Fly instead! :)

Vinny would really love this, and Goulie could use the excerise!

Such a good review. I appreciate the first-hand advice, but am sorry you had to go through it. I will definitely try this toy for my 'hard-to-please' but 'loves-to-play' girl kitty.

Do you remember the silver tinsel that you draped on Christmas trees for that sparkly festive look?  You know where this story is going...When I was growing up my cat Princess loved to play with the tinsel hanging from the tree and chew on it.  So we hung the tinsel way up in the tree, however Princess learned how to crawl up in the tree, knocking down Christmas balls in the process of getting to her beloved tinsel.  One time, she actually brought the whole tree down but that is another story.  We thought we were so careful, but one day I noticed a flash of silver or something around the buttuck area of the cat.  Yes, it was a piece of tinsel hanging out!  Needless to say, that was the last day that we hung tinsel on the tree. 

One of my cats, Reagan , has a fascination for BEN-GAY. I have never seen any thing like it. I can rub some on and no matter what part of the house he is in, he will sniff it out. He hops on my lap, and starts licking it off my knee. It's craZZZYY!

I know it's not quite eating it...but licking Ben-gay is pretty hilarious. What do you say? Does Reagan get the prize? MOL!!

We have a habit of adopting older cats from our local Cats Protection branch, who have been in foster care for a while, and offer them a peaceful retirement home.

One of our lovely ladies, Layla, *loved* mint chocolate. She wasn't allowed any until she was diagnosed with a terminal, inoperable tumour. After that, we let her have whatever she liked. Her favourite treat was mint fondant matchsticks, covered in chocolate. You'd hold one for her, and she'd lick all the chocolate off leaving the mint fondant behind - which would disappear over the course of the evening! We'd break up a couple of sticks for her, and leave them on a plate.

One weekend, we were away, so asked our cat-friendly neighbour to feed the kitties for us. Her toddler daughter came in, saw the sticks we'd left for Layla, and ate them... and our neighbour replaced the box, not realising that they were for feline, not human, consumption! I was mortified when we were told that her daughter had been eating the cat food. Oh, well - didn't do her any harm!

Another of our venerable ladies, Tari, was hooked on Tandoori King Prawns, the spicier the better. We ended up having to get her her own portion when we got an Indian take-away, otherwise our life wouldn't be worth living! (Oh, and she loved chips, when we had fish and chips!)

I would love to receive a Neko Fly for our current two, who can't even catch a leaf, let alone anything else!

Ever since I adopted my Scottish Fold, Piglet, I have taken a monthly birthday photo of him with a wax number candle.  Without fail, he chomps on it.  I even used a larger wooden #2 for his 2nd birthday last month, and he put teeth marks in that too.   He loves chasing bugs, so I have absolutely no doubt that he would go crazy for a Neko Flies toy.  I also think it would be helpful in interacting with my diabetic foster cat, who seems to have issues trusting humans after what I imagine was a rough life on the streets.

Thank you for your review of the Neko Flies. I did not read the package, and began to worry when I saw how addictive this toy was. Gusto never tires of it, and when I leave it after play, he'll sometimes get it by himself and I find the entire toy -- wand, string, and fly -- somewhere else in the house. I will immediately stop leaving it out, thanks to your review. 

Louise