Fleece Braid Kicker

🧺 You will need

• An old fleece blanket or jumper, cut into three strips about 60cm by 5cm
• A small handful of dried catnip or silvervine powder
• Strong thread and a needle
• Scissors
• Optional: a little polyester stuffing

🔧 How to make it

1. Cut three even strips of fleece. Fleece is the right material because it does not fray, so no hemming is needed anywhere in this project.
2. Stack the three strips and stitch them together firmly about 3cm from one end.
3. Plait the strips as you would hair, keeping the tension even and fairly tight — a loose plait unravels within a week of enthusiastic kicking.
4. Halfway along, tuck a pinch of catnip into the centre of the braid and keep plaiting to trap it inside.
5. Add a little stuffing along the way if you want more bulk for the back legs to work against.
6. Stitch the far end securely and trim both ends to a neat tassel.
7. Give it a firm tug from both ends to check nothing shifts before handing it over.

💡 Tips

Length matters more than anything else: the kicker should be roughly as long as your cat's body so it can be gripped at the front while the hind legs rake the far end. Too short and the cat cannot get the geometry right. Do not use it as a hand-tug toy — encouraging a cat to grapple with anything attached to your arm teaches it that hands are fair game, and that lesson is much easier to avoid than to undo. Refresh the catnip by rubbing fresh leaves into the plait every few weeks, since the volatile oils fade.

📝 Notes

Twenty minutes and free, and it addresses a genuine gap in most cats' toy boxes — plenty of things to chase, very little worth wrestling. Make two or three at once while you have the fleece out and rotate them, since a toy that disappears for a fortnight comes back interesting.

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