Our cat has toys; I suspect most cats with pet humans do. She likes them. Or she used to. We moved a while ago, and when our new refrigerator was delivered, and the old one moved away from the wall and taken away, we discovered that a previous resident had had a cat, and the cat apparently had stashed (or lost) a few cat toys behind the fridge. We found two small soft yarn balls, with pieces of yarn arrayed out from the center, and, mixed in with the soft multicolored yarn, metallic glittery threads. That's a picture of them, to the left. The cat immediately claimed them. A few days later, we realized that the two balls had mysteriously multiplied into five; this is not an easy thing to do in a home that is still mostly empty.
Those little balls are absolutely adored by the cat; she chases them, she hides them, she tosses them and pounces on them. She seems to take great delight in simply carrying one around in her mouth. Sometimes she holds one or more between her paws and sort of . . . well, croons. I'm not sure if she's nursing it, or planning to eat it, honestly. It's not something I've seen her do before. She used to bring us "presents," in the form of lizards, snakes, small birds and rodents, when she had access to the out doors; sometime she leaves us glitter ball presents too—she'll bring one to us, and demand attention, or leave one on our chairs, or the bed, or our shoes . . . so I'm not clear, at all, whether she considers them toys or food, or indeed, if that distinction even matters.
The glitter balls are absolutely her favorite toys now; she's pretty much abandoned all others. Well, almost all others. She is also oddly enamored of the bottom half a box meant to hold a dozen doughnuts. We had the box, and a paper bag we'd cut in half to use the top half as wrapping paper, stacked by the door to go down to recycling. That was about two weeks ago; within minutes of stacking the remnant of the bag in the box, the cat was in the box, arranging the paper to her satisfaction. She can't quite fit in the box lying down, but she does like to sit in it, and she plays with the box and the paper, endlessly. Now, we've thought about maybe getting her a bed, a permanent place for her to sleep, but, given how much she likes to perch on chairs, or in the windows, we're pretty sure she wouldn't want it, or use it. It's the same phenomenon you sometimes see with young kids; you buy them a toy, they open it with great excitement on Christmas day, but then spend the next three days completing ignoring the toy, and playing with all the empty boxes.
We figure we can always buy more doughnuts when this box wears out, but we're looking for more of the glitter balls; the five have mysteriously been reduced to three.