Personally, I have a hard time determining when our cats are asking for the catnip to come out and play. It’s usually a look that’s indistinguishable from their “feed me” look and let’s face it, food always goes over well with them.
But then, catnip seldom gets a nose turned up to it either — in fact, it’s popular enough in this house that we have a corner and a stack of toys devoted to the stuff. However, we had never quite considered that one sort of catnip might be preferred over another by our fluffballs. They always go for whatever we bring home from the pet store.
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Mikey Fivebucks thinks a bit differently when it comes to his felines.
Mikey only wants the best for his cats — and for everybody else’s as well.
That’s how he ended up diving deep into the world of catnip for about three-and-a-half years.
“It just kind of took over my life,” he told BlogTO. “I’ve just been really obsessed with cat nip.”
He looks at it less like something to amuse his cats and more like cannabis for felines, and he has some grand plans based on that view: a catnip dispensary, with different catnip strains, each of which have different effects on cats.
Mikey says that store-bought catnip isn’t quite what it could be.
“Traditionally commercial catnip is dehydrated and milled with little selection being available,” he wrote on Kickstarter. “I wanted catnip to be a more fun experience from purchasing to using the product and wanted to play on the idea of catnip’s paralells to cannabis. So, I decided to take my catnip quality to the next level.”
He’s done the research and found that different strains do indeed provoke unique reactions.
Working out of his apartment, Mikey has grown catnip seeds sent from all across the globe, including Germany, Spain, and France, and tested them out on volunteer cats.
From his tests, Mikey narrowed the catnip plants down to three strains:
Cativa, which generated bursts of speed and silliness in the majority of tester cats.
Indicat, which made most tester cats relaxed and mellow.
And Hybird [sic], which blended the two so cats would either experience that playfulness followed by relaxation, or the reverse.
So if Mikey can get his dispensary up and running, he’ll be marketing catnip much like cannabis but with a feline twist.
He’ll have six different varieties of catnip available, packaged up with amusing and evocative artwork: Indicat strains Fuzz Aldrin and Critical Mouse; Hybird strains Purrmafrost and Pawnapple Express; and Cativa strains Meower Diesel and Freddie Purrcury.
“Make sure you hide this bag well because most of our tester cats found where it was hidden, and tore the bag apart to get into it,” the description for Freddie Purrcury reads. “They’ll want it all and they want it MEOW!!”
But don’t be fooled by the artwork and the puns — there’s some craft and care involved.
“After I harvest my catnip, I slow cure it to ensure its potency and DON’T pre grind it,” Mikey wrote on Kickstarter, describing his process. “The flowers, leaves and some stem parts are left whole. Part of the experience is being able to freshly grind it up yourself and when you do, both you and your cat(s) will take in the aroma of fresh, minty cured catnip for the first time. All my cured catnip is stored in glass jars with humidex readers to keep quality at a premium until its ready to be scaled and packaged.”
So far, Mikey is on a good pace to get his shop started and out of his apartment.
His Kickstarter has raised more than $4,700 of his $5,200 goal at the time of this writing, funds he says will go towards things like more equipment and storage, materials, marketing, and of course, expanding beyond his apartment.
“I’m hoping to grow it into being able to grow a team,” he told BlogTO. “There’s nothing like that out there for cats.”
What do you think? Would you buy catnip like this for your furry friends? Let us know in the comments!
h/t: BlogTO
