Treat Puzzles for Cats
Food and treat puzzles are some of the best ways to give your indoor cat mental challenges and stimulation.
Even if your cat isn’t necessarily food motivated they can still benefit from a puzzle occasionally at mealtime. When cats are indoors 24/7 they don’t always get to express their natural instinct to hunt for food and solve challenges that use the brain muscles puzzles can help to flex and train. Not to mention, puzzles help to slow down your cat’s eating and improve digestion while helping to control their weight.
If your cat gets bored or understimulated they can begin to act out trying to find ways to use their natural curiosity and intelligence. So if your cat is always trying to seek out challenges, getting into things or places you want to keep them out of, you’re worried they're getting bored and lazy, or you want to keep them occupied for a period of time, try introducing puzzles and working their way up in difficulty!
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Click to jump to each skill level!
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Beginner! Best for cats who haven’t done puzzles before or maybe aren’t the most intellectually inclined.
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Recommended brain cells: Sometimes 1 (but you love them anyway)
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Intermediate! Great for cats who have completed beginner level puzzles with ease or are too smart for simpler puzzles.
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Recommended brain cells: A handful
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Advanced! For cats who can never be out worked or have successfully moved up through beginner and intermediate puzzles.
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Recommended brain cells: All of them
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Each section is ordered from most beginner friendly in that level to the most advanced of that level.
Lucy’s tip: If your cat hasn’t tried puzzles before, start with a beginner puzzle and work your way up over time to more advanced!
Beginner!
Lick Mats
While not quite a puzzle, lick mats are a great option to help slow down meal time and switch things up when you’re feeding your cat wet food! And if your cat gets too used to it and speeds up, swap it out for a different one! Lick mats are often more affordable than puzzles so they’re more accessible and you can potentially have more of them on hand to cycle through.
Spinning Fish
A great stable option that might be better for senior cats or those with mobility issues than the Hunt ‘n Swat Treat Dispenser since they don’t have to chase it around, but it’s still a simple reward. And it can attach on top of Catstages’s ball tower
Hunt 'n Swat Treat Dispenser
A Catmunity favorite toy, the Hunt ‘n Swat Treat Dispenser combines simple swatting and active playtime with your cat’s mental stimulation and a treat reward.
It’s a basic beginner treat dispenser kitty can swat and chase, and get their treat reward from a single treat hole. So it’s not only a mental game, but gets out some of their physical energy too.
Quirky Kitty Pizza Puzzle
The Quirky Kitty Pizza Puzzle is a great introductory toy to sliding puzzles. It has a few large sliders that make it simple to understand and catch on for cats who haven’t done puzzles before.
Available at Chewy!
Whisker City® Butterfly Treat Puzzle
The Whisker City® Butterfly Treat Puzzle Cat Toy can be your cat’s first foray into a puzzle that has more than one element. Along with the classic sliding elements, this butterfly introduces spheres that kitty has to turn over to get to their treat in two different sizes.
Available at PetSmart!
Frisco level 1 Tiered Cake Puzzle
Frisco by Chewy has six tiers of difficulty with their puzzles. They were originally made for dogs, but some of them can still work for cats!
Level 1 is an adorable cake themed puzzle with simple sliders, but more pieces, different shapes, and smaller components than the Quirky Kitty Pizza. And since those sliders are touching each other in the centerpieces, they may have to slide back and forth a few times to get to their treat if they slide too many at the same time.
It’s a great start to help get them ready for the mechanics of more advanced puzzles. The cake theme also makes this a perfect birthday gift!
Available at Chewy!
Trixie Mad Scientist Turnaround Puzzle
The Trixie Mad Scientist Turnaround Puzzle is our first puzzle that involves two steps for kitty to get their treat. Once they flip the treats out of the top by tipping the tubes, there’s still a second challenge! They have to fish out their reward from the maze of prongs underneath. Just make sure kitty doesn’t cheat and tip the whole puzzle over to get them out of the maze!
Cat Amazing Classic
While this is the simplest of the four Cat Amazing puzzles, it’s at the higher end of the beginner level because it has 3 small levels of difficulty inside it, depending on where you put the treats.
When Lucy first started using it she found it really difficult and gave up on her first few tries. But now, a few years later, it still keeps her entertained & digging for her treats!
Cat Amazing puzzles are made of cardboard which may not be the best if your cat can easily become destructive.
Available at Chewy, Amazon, & Cat Amazing!
Lucy’s tip: Want the biggest bang for your buck? Try either getting one large puzzle you can move the pieces around and constantly change the pattern and difficulty level, or a few smaller more affordable ones you can rotate between!
Intermediate!
Kitty Lickin’ Layers
The Catstages Kitty Lickin’ Layers is unique because it can be used with a mix of wet and dry food at the same time! It’s best for mixing things up and adding enrichment during meals rather than for treats since each food section is larger and more visible. Using treats might not be as interesting for your cat with this puzzle.
Frisco Level 2 Watermelon Puzzle
This puzzle uses three different types of mechanisms: peg sliders, rotating balls, and large section sliders. It’s like a more complicated combination of the Whisker City® Butterfly and the Frisco Level 1 Puzzle. What levels it up is the turn and slide element in the center. Now instead of just sliding and immediately being rewarded with a treat, kitty has to slide a center tile and then shift the peg slider into the open space to unlock their treat.
Available at Chewy!
Cat Amazing Sliders
The Cat Amazing Sliders Puzzle has up to two layers and three sliding boxes. The three small box puzzles inside move around as kitty pushes and paws at them for their treats, making kitty move around the entire puzzle. There’s an added challenge of the moving boxes being moved around the interior by your cat and not being on a track like most other puzzles.
Try adding just one box or all three depending on your cat’s skill level! Since Cat Amazing puzzles are made of cardboard they’re fully collapsable and adjustable on the inside!
Available at Chewy, Amazon, & Cat Amazing!
Cat Amazing Hex
The Cat Amazing Hex has two tiers, ten compartments, and up to six optional fumblers to put inside that get in your cat’s way and move around for an extra layer of challenge between your cat and their reward. Cat Amazing also keeps things interesting for your cat by mixing up the shapes and sizes of each hole they have to reach inside of for their treats.
Available at Chewy, Amazon, & Cat Amazing!
Frisco Level 3 Bento Puzzle
Half simple peg sliders on the perimeter, and half 2-step precision sliding in the center! Your cat has to line up the center spinner’s hole with the line of the interior sliders to get their treats. And now they have to turn the WHOLE center piece, not just sections, which will require more effort to be exhausted.
Available at Chewy!
Lucy’s tip: Just because you’re moving up in difficulty doesn’t mean you can’t go back! Switching up their puzzles and bringing back an older, easier one might still take them a minute to remember how to do it!
Advanced!
Rainy Day Food Puzzle
Another Catmunity favorite puzzle is the Nina Ottoson Rainy Day Food Puzzle. This puzzle also features 3 different mechanisms: a center spinner, swiveling raindrop covers, and peg sliders.
These peg sliders are on tracks that curve, not just simple straight push tracks like most other puzzles, and some with multiple pegs on the same track.
The center spinner covers cups all around it, not just where the peg tracks collide with it, so kitty has to keep spinning the whole piece all the way around to find all of their rewards.
Some of the swiveling raindrops can swing onto multiple tracks, covering more treat cups, so once kitty has moved a raindrop out of the way of their treat, it might be directly blocking another one. Kitty may have to keep swiveling the same raindrop multiple times to get all of their treats. And certain spots in this puzzle combine all three motions of spinning, sliding, and swinging for kitty to get to their treat!
Frisco Level 5 Flower Puzzle
There are a lot of different mechanisms going on in the Frisco Flower Puzzle. There are unlock & lift petals, slide out petal drawers, a peg slider petal, and a spinning center piece. If your cat is bored of puzzles getting repetitive this is a great option to toss in for something that tackles multiple different challenges in one toy.
This toy was designed for dogs so bear in mind your cat might have some difficulty operating some of the slide out petal drawers with their smaller paws.
Available at Chewy!
Nina Ottoson Multi-Puzzle
The Nina Ottoson Multi-Puzzle is similar to the Frisco Bento puzzle but with the added ability to lock some of the outside sliding blocks. On the inside section is that three step process to get to their treats by moving the entire center piece and shifting the peg sliders. And if kitty runs into some blocks in the middle, they can move to the outside layer for some easy treats to stay motivated. With twenty compartments on the outside they can keep switching from the inner section to outer and back!
Cat Amazing Mega Puzzle
This is not a lay flat puzzle like most others, The Cat Amazing Mega Puzzle offers a multi-layered, three tiered all over challenge. With twenty-seven (yes, 27!!!) unique chambers, it’s the largest, most complex Cat Amazing puzzle, and possibly puzzle on this list. Designed to keep your cats on the move and flexing their puzzle solving skills reaching from the top and all four sides, they may even have to climb on top of it to retrieve all of their treats. Made for cats who love a true hunt!
Cat Amazing recommends this for cat puzzle MASTERS - is your cat up to the challenge?
Available at Chewy, Amazon, & Cat Amazing!
Have any more puzzles you love or even more advanced options? Have you tried any of theze puzzles? Let us know!