Aside from the tons of toys you can provide your cat with and offer to play along with it, and providing your cat some outside time to entertain itself, you can also offer your cat “foraging” opportunities.

What does that even mean?!

To forage, or foraging means:

verb: collect or look around for (food)
noun: the act of searching for food

Foraging is what all animals do in the wild for their food and it’s VERY instinctive for animals, including cats. This is why so many of our outdoor cats hunt down lizards, large bugs, and small birds. It’s instinct.

Providing your cat with opportunities to look for its food around your house it very stimulating and gets a lazy cat up and active as well as eager to find the next hiding spot! When doing this for the first time you will want to pick easy spots like on the ground under a table, or on top of a couch the cat is allowed on. As your cat gets better at it, you can choose harder places to get to and even advance to making your cat its own foraging toy!

Get creative, you can make your own or use toys at petstores to create one. You can use its regular hard food or hard treats for these toys, but wet or soft food is not recommended for this type of thing! That can get messy and stinky around your house! It’s also harder for the cat to get the hard food at, keeping it busier longer.