9 Gift Ideas for Cats and the People Who Love Them

Our favorite fluffy friends are quite literally murderous creatures who kill more than three billion birds annually, but maybe if you let your cat get its aggressions out on fake birds it will be less inclined to commit lethal acts. (Unlikely; check this out anyway.) Go Cat’s Da Bird Feather Teaser is a bunch of feathers on a string, attached to a three-foot wand, and it is absolutely the best less-than-$10 you will ever spend on your cat’s toy collection.

Coax your cat into being brushed with the True Touch Glove, a dimpled, polyester-and-silicone glove that lets you pet your feline and brush away loose hair at the same time. Pro: It also works on dogs! Con: Not as great for short-haired pets. Pro: One size fits all! Con: It’s only available as a right-handed glove. Pro: Your cat won’t even realize you’re brushing him! Con: Cat is still the boss, per usual.

Who’s a spoiled kitty? Any cat that has furniture from Tuft + Paw, which is the Restoration Hardware of cat furniture. Why give your cat cheap toys or a hair brush when you can spend $449 on a cornucopia-shaped cat hideout called Indigo? Why buy a ratty scratch post when you can get a $299 Volto, which looks like it might double as a Swedish-made high-fidelity sound system? Our favorite is the $499 Rifuiti, a litter box that masquerades as a console cabinet for your foyer. Go ahead; buy one. Your cat will love the box it ships in.

As much as the modern litter box might be designed to eliminate tracking, you still might have to clean kitty’s butt and paws yourself from time to time. For this unpleasant task (unpleasant for the cat, of course, the most important being here), we recommend Well & Good’s Deodorizing Paw and Bum Wipes, which are durable but still soft for sensitive parts. Also available in a fragrance-free, hypoallergenic formula; those are double the cost.

OK, here’s a gift that’s for The Humans: FURemover’s lint brush, which we prefer over plastic lint rollers since it’s more eco-friendly. It can be used wet or dry to clean clothes, furniture, your car upholstery, any place that cat hairs mysteriously appear. It’s not terribly expensive, either, which means it’s a good idea to get a few of them. Like we said: Pet hairs pop up in the darndest places.

Hear me out on this one: Google’s new Home Hub, a seven-inch smart display designed to live on your kitchen counter or night table, has a feature called Live Albums that uses face recognition technology in addition to pet recognition. Set up a Live Album in your Google Photos account on your smartphone, then select a series of images of your cat that already exist in your Photos collection, and Google will start auto-populating the smart display with photos of the cat. When it comes to using artificial intelligence for the things that matter, Google’s not kitten around.

Still not sure what to get your favorite cat lover for the holidays? You can always fall back on Chewy.com, one of our favorite pet-centric shopping sites, to put together a curated box of goodies for you. The gift box ships with five or more handpicked items, mostly editable treats but also sometimes toys or a diffuser that’s supposed to be calming for cats. Again, all of this is for the cat; the human is only there to open the box.