Peanut's Little Yarn Things
by Linda
It's almost silly to even put this pattern out there, but I've made a couple dozen of these at this point (they are for the most part, lost in various parts of the house). My cat, Peanut, is absolutely crazy about them. My daughter's cats love them as well. These animals are young, two of them not quite a year old, the third is almost 2 years old. I cannot guess whether an older cat would be as interested.
These are soooo simple and quick. I'm not sure exactly what the appeal is about them, maybe they look like a small mouse to a cat's instincts? We play fetch, catch, baseball and door hockey with them, she chases them around the carpeted, tiled, or wooden floors by herself from time to time. For some reason, Peanut likes them wet -- she'll often take one over and drop it in her water dish, then bring it back out to play with. :)
This all came about when I was starting to try to make a pattern for, gosh, I can't even remember what it was. I took some yarn, started to make some sort of granny square based or circular item, the cat got more interested than usual in what I was doing, and the rest is history. :)
- a couple of yards of yarn, acrylic in sport or worsted seems to do the trick
- crochet hook of pretty much any size
- maybe two minutes of your time, tops
![[Peanut's Little Yarn Thing]](images/yarnthing.jpg)
- Ch 4, slip stitch to form ring.
- Chain 2 or 3.
- Work about 13 to 15 double crochets in ring, join to form a round.
- Break yarn and secure (or hide) end of yarn.
- Done!
- For variety, you can use treble crochets instead of double.
- Much of the appeal seems to be the yarn itself. The one I used was sport weight acrylic, in dark purple and blue variegations, bought at the clearance bin no less! :)
- You can also vary the number of stitches you make in the ring to make the little disk flatter, more cup shaped, rufflier etc.
- This seems to be the one case where the cat doesn't care if there's a two inch or so length of yarn hanging from the centre or outer edge, they have no interest in that little piece. They just want to chase the whole thing around!
- I highly suggest making about six of these. They easily disppear under doors, dressers, etc. and if your cat enjoys them, will likely demand another one right away if the original cannot be found. :)
- They do get somewhat ratty looking after a while, having been chewed, clawed, watered... :)
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