Hagen Catit Design Senses Play Circuit

As we have a 3 month old kitten it's fair to say that our house is slowly filling up with lots of toys & gadgets to keep her occupied as well as toys that we can play with her with. She has a whole host of toys, beds and various other things now as we don't want her to be getting bored when we are out at work during the day and no-one wants to play with the same thing over and over again do they?!

This 'Catit Senses Play Circuit' comes provided in a cardboard box. Within the box you will find 6 pieces of white plastic; 4 curved shape pieces and 2 pieces which are the 'ends' of the toy that have sloping ramps at the end of them. Each piece is designed to slot together so you can make a curved shaped toy for your pet. This toy is designed to be enclosed and there are 6 blue opaque plastic pieces which are designed to be clipped on to the top of the white pieces and then encapsulate a ball within. The ball is green and grey in design and is made to look like a rodent when it's being rolled backwards and forward in the play circuit. There are large slots cut out of the blue plastic tops which means your pet can place his or her paw in the slots to allow them to chase the ball and roll it back and forth but to ensure they are not able to remove the ball.

It was fairly easy to slot all of the pieces together and I have since undone them all and changed the shape of the circuit on two or three occasions with no bother at all. The blue plastic pieces slot in to the white bottom pieces quite well and they are designed to be pressed forward ensuring that they are 'locked' in to place and while this worked initially I have since returned home from work on more than one occasion to find my kitten has managed to unhook a piece and launch the ball out of the circuit and on to the floor.

This product, when all slotted together and working as it should, has given a fair bit of entertainment to my kitten but I have found that the ball is not flowing freely throughout the circuit and seems to get stuck in two different places. This is quite frustrating for both myself and my kitten when we are playing with this as I want to be able to run it along, show her how it works, and then leave her to it for a little while so she is entertained. However, she will bat the ball it will then get stuck almost immediately and within a few minutes she ends up really bored and just goes off to play with one of her less expensive toys.

I would have to rate this 3 out of 5 because it's quite simple to build and use but the design seems to be flawed as the ball is regularly getting stuck and my kitten seems able to remove the middle section of this toy with no problem at all and then flick the ball out. This means I have to put it back together, almost every night, when I get home which just defeats the purpose of buying this toy as something that would look after itself and keep her entertained while I'm out. The slots do work well as she is able to get her paw in and out comfortably but this also is giving her more opportunity to tug out the looser top slotted pieces. This is quite a good toy but it would be so much better if my kitten wasn't able to take this apart on a regular basis! I paid just over £10.00 for my play circuit for Amazon and you can find this listed on Amazon and various vet retailer websites for around the same price.

Summary: An average play circuit that would be brilliant if it worked properly.