Owning pets sometimes feels like preparing for parenthood, though if my future kids start meowing, shedding, and biting me, I’ll have just reason to be worried. Also, if I find myself ever petting my children, well…I’m probably going to jail.  Either way, I’ve been told something about kids and toys that I can validate from my own experience as a child.  When you buy a young child a toy, they’ll most likely be more interested in playing with the box.

Figure 1 - They heard there were fish in the Amazon.

In this respect, I’ve found that young cats don’t differ all that much from young children. Though they’ve grown to enjoy their toy mice, fish, balls, monkeys, and Ewoks, my cats play more with cardboard boxes and paper bags more than anything else.  They love to hide in them, dive in them after toys, and pose as Amazon.com products (Figure 1).

Kittens become cats pretty fast, and mine have started to outgrow the cardboard carrier they came in from the Humane Society. Thus, I’ve started to think that I may need a cat carrier for their next vet visit or trip to wherever it is cats hang out on the weekends.  I started looking at cat carriers online, but with stuff like this $78 man card forfeitter out there, I figured there has to be a more economical solution. Granted, there are cheaper and more manly carriers in existence, but I still feel most are pretty overpriced.

Okay, fine.  There’s nothing manly about a cat carrier.  I said it.  Happy?

Anyway, I decided given their love of cardboard boxes, there was a temporarily solution to be had as long as I hung onto my empty 12-packs of pop: