How to Make Mini Witch’s Broom Cat Toys from Textures and Scents your Cat will Love

tortoiseshell cat sitting next to water fountain meowlloween salad bar

24/10/2019
The Lady Cat
22 Comments
Cat Enrichment
cat grass, cat salad bar, cat vine, meowlloween

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Last updated September 18th, 2020

Transform a cat vine stick or catnip stem into a witch’s broom for your cat’s Meowlloween salad bar. Interesting natural textures and scents that your cat is naturally attracted to provide plenty of enrichment for bored kitties.

At the Chirpy Cats house, we start preparing our indoor cat salad bar when the days are cooler and life in the catio garden winds down, preparing for winter. This is the perfect time to collect stems, vine twigs, and dried grasses from the garden to make an assortment of cat’s delights for indoor cat enrichment. Not forgetting the catnip harvest which will provide catnip throughout the long winter months. Add to the drama of your Meowlloween salad bar with these cute DIY mini witch’s brooms.

If cats could teleport through their secret ‘wormholes’ they wouldn’t need a witch’s broom but they would surely get distracted from impurrtant cat missions and stop to play with it! I thought it would be fun to make an assortment of witch’s brooms to add to the drama of our Meowlloween salad bar and the cats are loving it. Using cat vine or twigs and an array of cat-friendly grasses you can transform your cats Meowlloween to include more than just catnip. Scent and texture play a huge role in sensory cat enrichment so mix it all up and alternate for variety.

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In our post on how to grow cat grass using colorful water beads, we have step by step instructions on setting up your cat salad bar for any season. And a cat salad bar will entertain your furry ghouls long after Halloween and is an essential setup for cat enrichment, especially during the long winter months. Our salad bar refreshment station consists of the Swan Fountain by Pioneer Pet, against a backdrop of grasses, vine stems, cat grass and homemade cat toys to entice your cat to play and engage in hunting and foraging.

tabby cat sitting next to a cat water fountain and cat salad bar

List of materials needed

Jute twine
scissors
cat vine sticks or found twigs
cat-friendly grasses or herbs
Elmer’s glue or glue gun, (most glues sold for crafts are non-toxic, but keep pets away from wet glues)

tortie cat sitting next to gathered grass bundle — Scout the tortie supervises while I remove the plumes or “cattails” from the Purple fountain grass and arrange them in bundles.

Gather your grasses! This is the fun bit. You will be foraging outside to gather the perfect bristles for your witch’s broom. Dried stems and foliage from cat safe herbs such as parsley, oregano, cat thyme (Teucrium marum), or even some catnip stems left over from your catnip harvest make great bristles for a broom.
For this tutorial, I made different brooms with various ‘bristle’ types ranging from soft and flexible to dried and rigid such as:

Reed grass (Calamagrostis)
Blue fescue or blue oat grass (Avena sempervirens) – soft and pliable
Purple fountain grass (Pennisetum Setaceum Rubrum) with the plumes or “cattails” removed
Lemongrass (dried)
Dried catnip stems were used for some of the broomsticks

tortie cat with a bundle of grass in the catio — Scout takes her job foraging for grass quite seriously. This is a bundle from the reed grass.

purple fountain grass with the plumes intact — Purple fountain grass with the plumes ready for removal.

blue oat grass — *Avena sempervirens* or Blue Oat grass. This makes a nice flexible bunch of bristles for a mini witch’s broom

a bundle of reed grass with the plumes — Reed grass *(Calamagrostis)* with the plumes which will be removed.

Below are two ways to make a witch’s broom cat toy

Easy witch’s broom cat toy method # 1

For this method, you want the effect of a traditional witch’s broom or besom; rather scraggly looking with hard bristles.

making a mini witches broom for cat enrichment toy

Bunch up your grass in a bundle and position your cat vine in the middle of the bunch. I used a dry catnip stem for this particular broom.

making a witches broom with cat grass and catnip stems — A mix of dried purple fountain grass and lemongrass ‘bristles’

Position the edge of the bristles about a third of the way up the broom.
Arrange the bristles around the stem as evenly as you can.
Secure the grass tightly around the stem with a piece of twine.
Secure the bristles even more by winding extra twine all the way up to the base of the broom.
Use glue to neatly tuck in the last piece of twine to adhere around the stem
Trim off excess grass at the bottom.
Wait until the glue is dry and set before handing over to your feline testing team

tabby cat inspecting his new witches broom cat toy — Passes inspection from the Feline Committee Inspector, Ollie

Below is a different type of broom using feathery bristles from Fountain grass. The photo below shows the bare bristles with the plumes or “cattails” removed.

using grass and cat vine sticks to make mini witches broom — Cat vine broom using the feathery ends of the grass blades of purple fountain grass with the plumes removed.

wrapping the mini witches broom in twine — Tightly winding twine around the grass to secure it to the ‘broomstick.’ You may glue the twine around the broom.

Witch’s broom method #2

This style of witch’s broom requires the grass to be more flexible as you would be folding it over then tying it with twine.

How to make mini witches broom cat toys for meowlloween

Cut your preferred grasses or herbs and bundle together.
Place the cat vine broom in the middle of the bundle, but this time, line up the top of the bunch of bristles facing the opposite way; (what is going to be the bottom of the bristles should face the top of the broomstick)
Tie the bristles and vine stick together with twine to secure.
Then fold over all the bristles the opposite way and press down to shape it.
Tie another piece of twine around the broom to keep the bristles in place.
Keep winding twine around the ‘neck’ of the broom to make about a half-inch of a neck of twine. Use glue to bond the twine as you wind it around the neck of the broom.
If you find the broomstick/cat vine is slipping out of the hole in the middle of the bundle you may apply glue to the edge of the cat vine or catnip stem to bond it to the bristles.

step by step instructions on making a mini witches broom from oat grass

folding over the grass bristles to make mini witches broom cat toy — This is where you flip over the vine stick and fold over the grass

mini witches broom cat toy — …Until you have a ‘skirt”

tie the mini witches broom with twine for diy cat toy

tortie cat playing with mini witches broom cat grass and cat vine toy

Mini witches brooms in a meowlloween display for cats

Below is an Instagram clip showing a summary of the mini witch’s broom tutorial, featuring Ollie, the chief feline tester. I laughed when I replayed the video as you can see Ollie’s curious whiskers and ears on the left of the video. He was supervising me intently 😉

https://www.instagram.com/tv/B39sjC-lp94/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

NOTE: Always supervise your cats during play, especially if you have an avid chewer in your midst. If your cat has pica, a condition in which a cat will eat non-edible items, it’s especially important to watch your cat for possible ingestion.

Since we can’t do a play date, I hope you get to try this witch’s broom DIY tutorial for your kitties. Whether you call it Meowlloween or Halloween, your kitties wouldn’t want to miss out on this cat enrichment experience. Don’t give your cats a bad case of FOMO!

Do you think these mini witch’s brooms will distract your kitty from impurrtant cat missions? Chirp us a line in the comments below!

For extra creepy-crawly fun at the Meowlloween salad bar, check out these quirky looking pumpkin spider toys that your cats will love. They’re super easy to make using mini foam pumpkins and pipe cleaners.