Tumbler Cat Toy V2

Like a punching bag that dispenses food… for cats

About 1.5 months ago I got fed up with that fact that any cat toy with a feather had a lifespan of days to week in my household and so I designed a toy with a replaceable feather-thingy. I had it in use since then and my cat basically plays with it on a daily basis. But the current cat toy competition was the perfect opportunity to improve the design. So, yeah, here's V2.0 of my tumbler cat toy.

tl;dr:

1. Print the base part with either lightning infill (20-30%) or gradual infill
   • Optional: Pause around 40mm and add one or two tea spoons of rice if your cats like toys that rattle or you want it to have a bit of inertia while played with
2. Print one or several top parts
3. Glue feather(s) into hole(s) with wood glue. Wait 24 hours for it to dry

Additional materials:

• Feathers - I bought regular arts & crafts feathers from a supermarket
• Pet-safe glue - the easiest is solvent-free wood-glue according to my research (Elmers in the US, Ponal in German speaking countries), tho you can also make flour glue to be extra safe

Print & assembly instructions:

All printed in PLA.

The base part:

You can print this with any infill (20-30%) and this version will stand with all of the rods attached. Although it works best if you get the center of gravity as low as possible, so any gradual infills or those that close up towards the top (like lightning infill in Cura) are ideal.

Optional: You can also pause the print at 40mm and add a bit of filler material that adds a nice little rattle. If you want to do that, lightning infill is perfect because it leaves a big continous cavity for the filler to “swap” around in. This way also adds a bit of inertia which seems to make it a lot more fun for thats to play with.

One or two teaspoons of rice should be enough. You can also use something heavier if your cats like to play rough. In this attempt I added small bits of steel wire and that base is basically impossible to push over now.

The top part:

You really only need one, but they all print in about an hour, so I opted to print a few spare ones right off the bat. There are three different options to chose from here:

• A long one with one hole
• A short one with one hole
• A short one with multiple holes

Once printed, you only need to glue in the feathers. To spare you the testing, this is the way that worked best for me and resulted in the most durable results:

1. Put a drop of wood glue onto the part
2. Push it into the hole with a tooth pick
3. Wipe of excess of glue
4. Push feathers in

After that, you only have to wait for however your glue needs to harden. That was about 1 day for the one I picked. Its probably a good idea to wash the toy with food safe soap before you let your cat play with it/fill kibbles into it.

I hope your cat(s) like it as much as mine.

Changes from V1.0:

• I made the base bigger, so it's no longer necessary to add weight for it to keep standing even with heavier top parts.
• The base is also slightly compressed/flattened which makes it more stable and fall over less easily.
• The repository for kibbles is a lot bigger, which means you can add a lot more kibbles and it doesn't empty as quicky (both because the kibbles don't fall out as easily and because you can put in a lot of them).
• The lower center of gravity makes it bounce a little bit better.
• The threaded part of the rods now ends in an all-around bulge that makes the connection tighten up better.