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You may have to lower your expectations. I've never seen cats play together with a toy. It's always either taking turns or one watching the other. If one is too timid to play while the other is around, then you might have to play with them separately.
Toys with motors (moving ball, floppy fish, etc) have all scared my cats because of the noise.
They did like cork balls though. Something about the texture and weight. And tissue paper, cats love crinkly tissue paper.
Cork balls is a good call! I'll have a look for these.
And yeah, it's not really something I'd expect just something that would be fun to see.
I remember when we were trying to slow down one cat's eating, we got her a ball that released food as she knocked it around. She would knock it, grab some, and knock it again, leaving tons of food behind. Our second cat would hoover those up. That was unintended two cat play, however.
I think ripple rugs are meant for multiple cats?
This sounds funny, could you link the device you bought?
Unfortunately it was easiest to find on amazon (i just got it at a pet store years ago)
It was something like this
Our two cats will sometimes play by one grabbing a cat dancer or string toy and dragging it around while the other follows, so you could try that sort of toy where it's all attached but they can each have their own piece of string to grab.
The other way our cats will play together is one will get up on the dining table and start knocking shit off the table for the other to play with... But that's not really our preferred method.
Our cats are siblings/bonded pair so your milage may vary. They also sometimes just chase each other which is fun for them too I guess.
The toys that either have balls that get launched into the air, or ones that are small balls trapped in a loop for them to bat back and forth may be the kind of thing you're looking for, especially if you can ones that allow for small treats or catnip to be placed inside the balls
If they both seem interested you could use 2 boxes and throw a toy, ball, or crumpled piece of paper into each box. Cats being cats, they may still just take turns watching each other, but you could get some side by side play.
It won’t be good for both at the same time -most of the time- but if you can source free or super cheap peacock feathers, I’ve found them to be a toy that cats who don’t normally get along all want, and will thus play together better. The great equalizer.
They won’t, in my current three-household-9-cat experience (and so many past but before feathers), play with each other until it’s broken and you ditch it to their devices. They will just play with you (and enjoy the fuck out of it), but pay close attention to other cats playing the same way. And that’s a normal play strategy for cats - they enjoy watching play from cats they know, it gets them revved up for their own turn at play. Cats who get along well take turns playing with you, because they recognize that you don’t play the same way they do, and rarely respond to their play requests like other cats, and are thus a limited, and valuable, resource. They want to give you their energy, because they like what you do for them.
But when the peacock feather “dies”, and gets bent up in weird places, one will chew one end while another plays with the other end. It’s good for everyone. The cat chewing gets dental perks and the cat at the end has a now moving toy to play with.
It isn’t perfect, but you can’t really do anything other than encouraging play between them; they are fully sentient beings, like kids. You can encourage, but ultimately they make their own choices about friends and how to interact with them. And that’s ok.
Other than making boxes into castles (tape or wood glue work wonders), it’s more of an issue of rotating toys like one does with toddlers. If they normally have sponge balls, put them up and give them sparkly Pom balls. If they like strings, use long feathers, wands, or lasers for a few weeks instead. Just rotate their toys and they will keep the energy up while saving you money.
Not something that's available to buy, but could potentially build something similar with plexiglass and wood or 3d printing if you have one: https://youtu.be/CwVVBz6MNCk
It's amazing to me how often people reproduce Thorndyke's puzzle box to and discover the same things. Cats aren't great learners. https://www.simplypsychology.org/edward-thorndike.html
We have this catit ball track: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7TGNbWoYcaNnvpi8A
They push the balls back and forth between them, which is the only thing I have ever seen them do coop.
very nice, thanks for sharing!