Cat Party -6yr- Kitty Face Painting

Cat-theme birthday 6-year  My daughter LOVES cats and wanted an at-home, Cat party, but didn't want Hello Kitty, so we came up with these ideas: 

First, we found some invitations from the dollar store with cats on them.  When the girls arrived, my older daughter painted a nose and whiskers on everyone's face with cheap makeup and handed out cat ears made of felt & glitter attached to headbands I got at the craft store. 

We searched online for cat games, and decided on a yarn maze.  Since there were to be 14 kids and we didn't want to get too tangled up, I attached a toilet paper tube to both ends of 7 pieces of yarn.  

On one end, the tube had a picture of a cat, the other tube had a picture of a mouse.  I mazed them around the room, underneath chairs and tables, benches, etc., and each child had to find who was on the other end of their string.  After that (once the string was finally detangled and removed from the room), they did a craft. 

They made paper plate cats, modeled after something I saw on a party supplies website.  It used a small and a large paper plate, and we attached foam and fleece ears and paws, googly eyes, foam noses, pipe cleaner whiskers, a fabric bow and a fur tail, almost all which came from my scrap craft basket. 

After the craft, we had a relay race, where two teams raced to fill an emptied 9-Lives cat food can with dried cat food, using a small wooden spoon.  We intended to play a version of Hot Potato using a ball of yarn. 

For snacks, I had goldfish, and a plate of crackers and cheese with realistic gray cat-toy mice on the plate. 

For laughs, I made a kitty-litter cake from an online recipe, where you crumble cake & cookies (some colored with green food coloring for the chlorophyll)  in a new litter box and serve cat poop (melted Tootsie rolls) with a scoop!!!  Everyone got a big kick out of this. 

For the real cake, I made a cat-shaped cake out of two cut-up round cakes (another on-line pattern).  We planned to play  Mouse-Mouse-Cat, Toss the Smile and a Rhyming Game to fill the time if we needed, and I had Cat coloring pages on hand as well.  We had the Cat in the Hat soundtrack playing in the background.  

For party favors, I gave out Mad Libs Junior pads and gift wrapped them, with a gift-tag with a cat graphic, a sticker sheet of cats & mice and a gray mouse cat-toy on the top.  Overall, this at-home party was unique, inexpensive and a success!!!