Cat toy home repairs: How to make home repairs to your CatTamboo® Pet Toys

CatTamboo® cat toys are repairable from home. This helps make these interactive cat toys more “Green” because you can make them last. It also makes these green cat toys a great value.

Replacing the Cat Fly™:

To replace the feather on the end of your Tamboo Flyer®, follow these steps:

1. Remove the old Cat Fly™ by cutting it off with a pair of scissors. Be sure to leave the reinforced rod end and only remove the feather part of the toy.
2. Insert your new Cat Fly onto the tip of the tamboo rod. Your new Cat Fly should have come with two pieces of repair tubing. The small tubing is inserted first to form a union (in the form of a butt joint) between the two pieces. The larger tubing is placed over the first piece and heat shrunk in place in order to reinforce the joint.
3. After forming the union between your tamboo rod and Cat fly, first apply heat to the small repair tube. Heating can be done with a heat gun, hot blow dryer, or by carefully using a lighter. It doesn’t take much heat, so if you use a lighter then tapping the flame to the plastic tubing with short one second durations of contact between the tubing and flame will do the job.
4. Now slide the larger tubing over the joint and apply heat in order to reinforce it.
5. Allow to cool. Make sure the union is straight before allowing it to cool.

Repairing a mid-body break:

Not all mid-body breaks are repairable. If the rod splits longitudinally along its length, then you may have to purchase a replacement toy. If a horizontal split starts, then the best procedure to salvage your cat toy is to make a clean cut on each side of the split and then follow the procedures below. Otherwise, use the procedure below to repair clean breaks. Generally, if you have a break in the mid-body of you rod, it is best to begin with two cleanly broken off pieces of rod before attempting to use the repair tubing to form a union between the pieces.

1. Begin with two clearly separate rod pieces.
2. Overlap the two pieces of rod inside the tubing. The amount of overlap should be about 3/4-1″ which consequently is about the length of the repair tubing.
3. While holding the pieces in play, apply heat to shrink the tubing and activate the adhesive in the tubing.
4. Allow to fully cool.

This process works very well for repairing the tamboo rod on your pet toy. When done properly, mid-body repairs typically do not significantly affect the flight performance of your Tamboo Flyer.

More information about Tamboo Flyers®:

CatTamboo® pet toys went through two years of product development and testing before being released to stores. These pet toys have reinforcing to ensure that breakage is rare. We also high grade each tamboo rod to ensure that only the longest, best tamboo material is used in the production of CatTamboo® pet toys.

It may be necessary to create a clean break first in order to perform this home repair.

Warranty: Tamboo rods are tested individually for quality. They are an all natural product that is not indestructible, however, the rods are remarkably long, durable and ductile. Used responsibly, the rods will far outlast the feathers. New feathers can be added at home by using the extra repair piece that is included with your purchase.

If within the first few days, your toy breaks beyond repair:
Simply click the contact us button and explain what happened. In most cases, we will replace the toy free of charge.

CaTamboo® pet toys are the best cat toys ever made.  Get yours today!