This is an earthy, natural style food puzzle. The rock provides some weight to keep it all in place. Some cardboard tubes were used along with a little garden twine to keep it all together. It's a little rickety but a fun impromptu puzzle.
*Know your cats! Leaving string/twine unattended could result in a cat eating something they should not. Safety first!
This video shows Willow foraging from a protein shake container. You truly can make a food puzzle out of just about anything in your home and the goal here to show you how to do that!
It is nice to offer a variety of commercially available and homemade puzzles. Remember this is not only a feeding protocol but also mental stimulation!
We love seeing how people get creative with homemade puzzles, and sometimes people get fancy.
Making this puzzle requires some wood-working skills, but can easily be customized to your own preferences and your cat's needs! Brought to us thanks to Goug via Instructables - all the details you need are HERE!
Foraging toys do not need to be fancy. They simply need to vary to continually peak your cat's interest and be appropriate for their skill level. Remember that foraging is not just a feeding protocol but also mental stimulation for your cat.
The goal with this toy is for the cat to either shred the bag with their claws and teeth or to open it and use their paw to extract the food.
An old coffee mug can be laid on its side and filled with canned food. The mug handle provides stability and keeps the puzzle in place. Put it on a place mat or newspaper and allow the cat to scoop out food with a paw and lick it off. Many cats simply drag the food to the mat and lick it up from there as seen in this video. This can be a little messy, so some sort of place mat is a must!
You really can make a food puzzle out of just about anything!
These objects can increase or decrease in difficulty depending on how many holes you make and how full you fill the toy.
When there are only a few pieces left it can be challenging whereas a full toy is much easier.
This is an odd and unique shape which adds some nice variety to what hopefully becomes a large collection of foraging toys. Remember it is important to offer many different puzzles for the benefit of mental enrichment!
Have a 3-D printer? Then you can turn a regular food bowl into a foraging challenge!! Thingiverse, a website dedicated to sharing resources related to 3D printing, has a template for creating your own city landscape that you can place in a food dish for your kitty to eat around.