Cruelty free cat toys
About 3 years prior to building Furever Catlady, I was struggling with the fact that cats love and need toys from natural materials like fur/skin and feathers etc, and the fact that I am an animal lover.
How the h*ll am I gonna do about that?!
Cats are supposed to play in a way that brings out their natural instinct and we will probably always continue to try our best with plastic fake fur and keep reading posts about cats ending up at the vet because of plastic pieces stuck in their intestines because they did what they are supposed to do when they play, but it is not safe for them with the plastic toys.
This needs to change!
3 years later I have my plan all figured out.
Rabbit skin/fur
My toys made from real fur are handmade by me and the skins comes from local farms here in Sweden where they maintain a good lifestyle for the animals and follow all the laws and regulations about breeding, housing and slaughter.
One of our chosen farms are Stjärnhovs Kaningård and the skins are prepared only with a solution of alum, no other chemicals.
If your cat chew off a piece of rabbit skin, it will pass through the cat naturally and that is one big reason to choose real fur for plastic chewing cats.
Feathers
The feathers that are attached to all my toys are 100% cruelty free and comes from happy free roaming birds living with bird lovers in the rural counties of Virginia, USA.
The birds get special attention daily as they roam around hunting bugs and scratching for goodies in their chicken yards full of trees, shrubs, fresh air and sunshine.
Because this farm is more of an "hobby farm", the birds are not force fed or kept in cages to keep a steady flow of "producing feathers"
During the molting season the feathers are gathered several times a day and cleaned and sterilized before they are ready to be made into our cat toys.
A natural feather is totally fine for a cat to eat during playtime and that is why I won't use plastic feathers for my toys. It is unsafe for cats.
Wool
One painful thing I learned recently is that many of our cats wool bed or toys are the product of a really awful business of harvesting wool.
Something called "mulesing" is the removal of strips of wool-bearing skin from around the breech (
My toys made from wool are made from mulesing free wool from New Zealand and Sweden.
Our choices make difference <3