Highly recommended! We first discovered this phenomenon about 15 years ago. My good ol' cat Huckle was reaching, up to his shoulder, fishing around for something that had gone underneath the couch. I asked my dad what he was doing. He glanced up from his crossword puzzle and said matter-of-factly, "Oh, he's just trying to get his black snake."

I laughed and said, "His WHAT?" Dad reached under the couch, found the toy, held it up for me to see, and said, "This. His Black Snake."

It was a black pipe cleaner from the stash I'd had for a school project--not the plain/straight kind, but the fluffier kind where the fuzz is trimmed in a wavy pattern to have thick and thin parts. I had twisted it into a circle, making sure to affix the wire ends in such a way that the cat's mouth wouldn't get stabbed, and then wadded it up. And so at our house began the "Black Snake" era. There were 3 or 4 of them. The cats LOVED them.

Some time later, when I was in college at Texas A&M University, I wrapped everyone's Christmas gifts in maroon A&M-logo paper. I used cotton balls and green pipe cleaners to make the gift-toppers, since the Aggies had made it to the Cotton Bowl. Needless to say, the remaining pipe cleaners were destined to become Green Snakes, replacing the black ones which had long since gone to Black Snake Afterlife (under the refrigerator).

They are inexpensive toys to make, they are easy to mail, they travel well, it's no great loss if one gets away from you, and I have YET to find a cat that does not go crazy over one of these "Snakes."