DIY toy guide

Wine Cork Catnip Bobbers

Featherweight batting toys from natural cork

Natural cork is light enough to skitter across a floor when barely touched and soft enough to hold a claw, which makes a discarded wine cork one of the better cat toys hiding in most kitchen drawers.

Difficulty
Easy
Time
15 minutes
Cost
Free

🧺 You will need

  • Three or four natural cork wine corks (not plastic or composite)
  • A few feathers, or strips of fleece
  • Dried catnip or silvervine powder
  • A small sharp knife
  • Non-toxic PVA glue
  • A shallow dish

🔧 How to make it

  1. Check each cork is genuine cork rather than the plastic sort — plastic stoppers splinter into sharp fragments and must not be used.
  2. Scrub the corks in hot water to remove wine residue and let them dry completely.
  3. Cut two or three shallow slits in one end of each cork with the knife.
  4. Push a feather or a strip of fleece into each slit and secure with a dab of glue, leaving it to dry fully.
  5. Score a few shallow grooves along the body of the cork so a claw has something to catch on.
  6. Put the finished corks in a shallow dish with a spoonful of dried catnip and leave them overnight — the cork absorbs the scent readily and holds it for weeks.
  7. Give out one at a time and keep the rest in the catnip dish, ready to rotate in.

💡 Tips

Cork works on hard floors and disappoints on carpet, so give these out in the kitchen or hallway. The best version of this toy is barely modified at all — some cats prefer a plain cork with a couple of grooves to anything with feathers attached. Because they cost nothing, make six and treat them as disposable: a cork that has been thoroughly chewed can go in the bin without a second thought, which is not true of a toy that cost eight pounds.

Safety: Natural cork only. Remove feathers as soon as they start to shed, and take the cork away entirely if your cat chews pieces off rather than batting it — cork is not toxic, but swallowed fragments are still a foreign body risk. Supervise the first session with a determined chewer, and never leave a cork toy with a cat that treats everything as food.

📝 Notes

Fifteen minutes for a whole set, from something most households throw away. The catnip dish is the part worth keeping permanently: any small toy left in it overnight comes out considerably more interesting, and it is the cheapest way there is to refresh a stale toy box.

Cork absorbs catnip oils readily and holds the scent for weeks
Cork absorbs catnip oils readily and holds the scent for weeks
Small, light and cheap enough to be genuinely disposable
Small, light and cheap enough to be genuinely disposable

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