~RavenFeatherAngel

Another thing that keeps me busy these days is a special way of spending time with my pets. It is called "enrichment" and you might know this from zoos: Perhaps you've seen or heard that the animals there often have to 'work' to get their food? Like apes using tool to get raisins out of the wholes of a log? Perhaps you have, but, like me, you never thought about using this idea to make the daily life of your pets more interesting.
However, it seems to be a rather good idea, because, just think about it:

Out there in the wild people spend MOST of their 'active time', that is: when they are not saving and restoring engergy by sleeping - looking for food.
So serving their food to them on a silver plate makes their days plain boring!
My two cats really kinda showed me that: Sleeping all day untill feeding-time, then purring and mewing as if they hadn't been feed for WEEKS and gulping it all down - because it was their 'daily highlight'! The result: Lazy and chubby cats, even though I TRIED to animate them and play with them and made sure to buy high quality food and not overfeeding them...

Then I found a page about "Katzenfummelbretter" - translated into English: Kitty fumble boards. Even though it is a German page you can visit it HERE: [link] - the pics are well worth checking
I read it through and thought it was a pretty good idea. Havin a lotta spare time lately and with my dad at home from work, we both decided to build our own kitty board.
First a "dummy" made of cardboard, to see if Kiran and Many would like the idea. Here is the result:



As you can see, we succeeded! The kitties LOVED it! My dad was amazed and the next day he already presented them a kitty board made of wood:



I know the immage is rather small, but perhaps you can see that the board is made of a wooden base with three wooden modules, plugged in by dowels. So we can exchange them - even more variety for them kittens!

They really are having their fun with it:



Often they even sleep next to the board and check it every once in a while - who knows, perhaps it's been reflilled in the meantime???

Of course it was never my intention to feed them MORE then usual. So I reduced their tinnded food to 200g per cat a day. Additionally, they get about 20-40g of dried catfood each a day. Either in their kitty board or as reward during our clicker training sessions.

Changes in their behaviour I watched so far:

- they are more active
- they are more curious and interested in things going on
- they beg less! They even oversleep their usual lunch-time!!!

And we only started 3 days ago!
So I'd say it was a real success!!

Well now... I also have my ways to keep my gerbils busy.
If you want to hear more about it or you want me to explain clicker training to you I will happily do so in my next journal!