An apparatus for exercising a curious animal such as a housecat comprises a laser pointer mounted on a shaft driven by a geared motor mounted on a pedestal. The rotatable shaft is preferably generally vertically disposed and the direction of the pointer is preferably obliquely downward so that activation of the motor causes the spot beam of the laser to track around the pedestal with a vector of motion to attract a cat into interaction with the spot beam. In a further specific embodiment, the laser pointer may be mounted on the head of an oscillatory air circulation fan with a pedestal. The oscillation of the spot beam, together with the air movement of the oscillatory fan, further stimulates activity in a cat while conveniently inducing convective cooling.
A sports training aid that displays multiple surface-targets so as to aid the practitioner in acquiring accurate alignment, identifying an intermediate surface-target upon which to focus, and building confidence. The training aid utilizes a beginning point (16a), intermediate target (16b), and ultimate target (16c) sources. The surface-target displayed by the ultimate target source (16c) is used to aim at the point where the practitioner ultimately wants his or her ball or object to come to rest. The ball or object is placed upon the surface-target displayed by the beginning point source (16a) and is hit so that it passes over the surface-target displayed by the intermediate target source (16b), and if hit with the correct amount of force, it will come to rest in or upon the ultimate target. The target sources are housed in or upon the target source containment base (14) and the target source containment base is supported by an angled support shaft (12) which is supported by a weighted base (10).
