I am telecommuting today. My cat found an unused cartridge under my chair and proceeded to stalk it a very lively chase around the room. (It is even smaller and lighter than a milk-jug ring, her other favorite inanimate prey.)

As soon as I noticed, I took it from her (lest it be clawed/bitten open with messy and unhealthful results) and gave her a toy mouse in exchange; she didn't like the mouse quite as much.

What other FPN felines have discovered the toy in every cartridge?

My three cats like the pens themselves, which they constantly try to push from the table to inevitable destruction on the floor. And one of them, Kramer, who has something of a rubber fetish, once ate the O-ring from my Sailor 1911 when it snapped and fell to the ground. She wolfed it down with such speed, in fact, that I didn't have chance to work out what had fallen from the pen. I have yet to try them with empty cartridges, but I have no doubt that they'd approve.

Neil

My cat is fairly lazy. She likes to sniff my pens, but does not touch them. She does like to sit and watch me write.

I do not use many cartridges, but when I do I make it a point to police them up. I am scared that my feline will swallow one. The one or two she did encounter, she just sniffed and continued on her way. (Sigh of relief.)

Anything cartridge-like is fair game! It must be light, small, easy to bat around AND something that they (two of them) should NOT play with!

A favorite game is to find a pen (yikes!) or pencil on a table or any high object, and roll it around playfully until it hits the floor. Game over. Next!

Yep, that's another reason I took this one away from my kitty.

She doesn't try to paw pens or other things off the desk (she prefers to sit between me and the page or computer, rubbing her head on my hand occasionally), but any small object that reaches the floor is fair game.

I grabbed a disposable pipette out of a cup on the desk to clean out a converter. It wouldn't hold water; one of the cats had infiltrated the office and bit the bulb.

Our cat prefers to raid my Brass Bucket, which holds empty cartridge casings of anything from 38 Special to 45 Colt.

My pet lorikeet loves empty cartridges.

I have a few in my desk caddy from time to time, and she likes to hook her beak inside the opening, and carry the cartridge around, pausing to try and 'kill' it, as well as roll over and sit on it, before eventually flinging it off the side of my desk. Then she gets another one, and starts all over again.

One of my cats will bat at anything she can get her paws on; fast-food chain straws, cut to different lengths, make good substitutes for ransoming captive cartridges and converters. The other two prefer to sleep on any horizontal surface they can access.

So far not anything pen related. Just grocery bags. Spooky loves grocery bags. Oh and my hair things.

None of my cats has ever gotten their paws (or teeth) on a cartridge, but I do police them carefully - one cat is a severe plastic-eater, and I think she'd chew on it too much.

She also likes to bat my pens off the table. This is why I don't leave them unattended!

The proof is in the photo.

Mine is always after carts, AND pens... he took a swipe at my Lamy 2K with his claws... no canned cat food for kitty that night.

So I threw an empty cart down for Spooky. "Who cares". He sniffed it and went back into his paper box. Didn't even paw at it.