Folkmanis Ragdoll Cat Hand Puppet

The first cat was lost in shipping, but I am getting a refund. The second cat puppet arrived quickly and it is a beautiful puppet! Great for storytelling. Thank you, Amazon! Amazon should start filing complaints with the shippers. They are not as reliable as they used to be.

This is a beautiful, well made puppet. On the large side, and very realistic. The fur is very soft to the touch, similar to a real cat. I purchased it for my daughter who is going off to college. She suffers from anxiety and depression and has been considering getting an emotional support animal. I decided to try this first. I filled the hand hole with a microwavable heating pad, and put a cat purring sound effect (found on youtube on my phone) in the head section. it is very calming, soothing and stress relieving, when she curls up with it at night or to keep beside her when she is reading or studying. (I even found myself petting it, and scratching it's neck, as it sat on my lap.) I imagine it will be a welcoming site to come back to her dorm room and have kitty curled up on her bed. Of course there is no substitute for a living breathing animal, but this lovely cat is sure a lot easier to care for, and she won't have to run home between classes to feed it! Not sure if it'll work, but she loves it anyway, and it's worth a try.

This puppet has the quality I've come to expect from Folkmanis, there's definitely no better soft-puppet maker out there in the same price range! This cat is pretty much life-size, which is fun because it scares the heck out of me when I'm not expecting to see an animal in my bedroom late at night.There is realistically only one point of articulation on this puppet, which is its tiny mouth. My big tip after using it for a while: Use your pointer and ring finger for the top of the mouth, and your middle finger to articulate the jaw.This is a gorgeous puppet, but mine arrived rather flat. Giving it a quick brush with a soft-bristle and doing some small amount of trimming for the fur around the face really helped fluff it up and I'm looking forward to using this for some time to come!

Great product, my daughter loves it

I did a lot of looking at photos and video before I bought this cat, so I knew what to expect, and what I got was pretty much what I expected. The fur is beautiful and soft. Unlike some other reviewers, I have had no trouble with shedding. Maybe that was an old problem that's been corrected, or maybe I just got lucky. I did cut off a few long wispy bits of fur around the face that seemed to be ready to fall off, and that improved what was left.The face is cute but doesn't seem very cat-like to me. The tongue is a weird paper-like thing stitched in the middle to the lower part of the mouth; the one on mine was folded, but I've been able to straighten it out. The eyes are a lovely blue, but I can see why some people think they're creepy. I think the thick fur above them could give the face a creepy expression. I find that if I just push the fur aside a little the expression becomes sweet. What decided me to go ahead and make the purchase was a youtube video I ran across called "1000 subscribers on MilkywayMaggie";, where a young girl uses this puppet as a character, and it's very appealing.The thing that really strikes me as ugly is how bow-legged the legs are. I went so far as to do a google search to see if real Ragdoll cats are bowlegged, but that doesn't seem to be the case.One person complained about the mouth being too small to get your hand in it. If you try to use it like a sock puppet, that's true. What you should do instead is put your middle finger into the lower part of the mouth, and your first and ring fingers into the upper part. The tag that comes with it should really have instructions so people don't get frustrated.All in all, I'm very glad I bought this cat. It's nice and cuddly and soft. If only its face were a little more realistic I'd be even happier.ADDENDUM: After a couple of weeks, I've fallen in love with this cat. The bow-legged front legs allow it to curl its paws under its chin when it's lying down, which looks pretty realistic, so I think I've changed my mind about that. And the face is looking more cat-like to me all the time.