We bought our cat a "scratching post" which was embedded with catnip. She sniffed it once and then never looked at it again. We never really bought her toys because we found that she took no interest in them. She did, however, play with pieces of string if you dangled them in front of her. I suppose that would be her favourite toy. She did once find a cork from a bottle and had great fun chasing it. She spent most of the evening running around after it and playing with it in the corridor. When she wanted to scratch something, she would use the carpets on the stairs and the ends of the bed. Luckily, we are not particularly houseproud so it did not bother us particularly. It just made those things look rather worn out but caused no serious problems. We put tape over the parts of the carpet she scratched but she would just choose another spot and start using that instead. Unlike other cats, she did not use curtains at all despite having easy access to them.
A friend's cat likes to play with rolled up balls of newspaper. She pushes them around with her paws and chases them.
