Cat exercise? That's Pandora's box

Getting cats to exercise is akin to getting pigs to fly. Dog people have no clue how easy they’ve got it. Throw a ball, and your pooch takes off in hot pursuit, tail wagging with joy. But a cat? Oh, puh-leez. Try tossing a few of those little plastic balls that contain jingle bells to get your mature couch-potato kitty to spring into action. The look you’ll get indicates one of the following responses. “Looks like you dropped something. Better fetch.” “You’ve just wrecked the feng shui of my living room.” “Wake me when you’ve got toys made of tuna.” “Did we get a dog?” My resident feline, Pandora, is quite a big girl. At 6 or 7, she’s middle-aged in cat years. When people comment on her girth — and they always do — I point out that she’s big-boned and quite fluffy. More than 13 pounds of fluffy, to be exact. But I’ve become... [read full story]