Cat Party Decorations to Set the Mood

Purchase some ready-made cat party decorations from Birthday in a Box or choose from our list of decorating ideas to create a kitty cat atmosphere for your party. Try just a few ideas, or go all out!

• Stock up on cat partyware, including cat party plates, cups, and napkins.
• Let paw prints lead the way! Use sidewalk chalk to draw kitty paw prints on the driveway or sidewalk. Then use dry erase markers to create paw prints on windows or mirrors inside the house.
• Draw cat faces on balloons with a black marker. Attach construction paper ears, and place them around the party space.
• Create large signs shaped like fish. Add cute sayings like “Wipe Your Paws”, “No Dogs Allowed”, and “Kitty Crossing.”
• Your child’s own stuffed cats will make great decorations. Set a group of toy cats on the table as a centerpiece, or place baskets filled with stuffed cats around the party space.
• Cut fish shapes from construction paper to use as place cards for the table.
• Make balls of yarn by wrapping pink, brown, or green yarn around small Styrofoam balls. Fill several bowls with the balls of yarn and set them out as decorations.
• Use a washable marker to draw a nose and cat whiskers on your guests as they arrive.
• Balloons always say “party” to children! Tie groups of helium balloons together and anchor them in place with balloon weights. For greater impact, combine shaped balloons with colorful latex balloons. Tie a balloon to the back of each chair, and tie a group of five balloons to the birthday child’s chair!
• Ask an older child or adult to make balloon animals for the children. Use the easy Birthday in a Box Balloon Animals Kit which includes an instruction book, balloons, and balloon inflator. There’s no need to master the entire book! One or two basic shapes will delight young children.
• Make a banner that says “Welcome to [your child’s name]'s Kitty Cat Party!” and hang it near the party entrance. See Birthday in a Box's selection of cat banners and let us do the work for you!

Kitty Cat Snacks

When it comes to food, partygoers are usually perfectly content to eat pizza or hotdogs, which is certainly much easier on the hosts! However, if you have the time and would like to serve up some more interesting treats for your kitty party, consider these ideas:

• Place a group of stuffed cats on a pedestal cake plate in the middle of the food table as the centerpiece.
• Serve snacks, ice cream and cake in new, clean cat bowls. Use paint pens or permanent markers to personalize the bowls with the children’s names. If desired, add drawings of fish and paw prints.
• Consider serving food that cats like, such as cubes of cheese, tuna fish sandwiches cut into quarters, and goldfish crackers.
• Serve cookies or sandwiches cut with fish or cat cookie cutters. Brownies or crispy rice cereal treats can also be served in these shapes.
• Offer “Cat Chow” made from cereal snack mix.
• Make a few “Catnip” labels for empty containers, and fill them with round children’s cereal, goldfish crackers, or gummy fish candy.
• Kitties love warm milk! Heat a pan of milk until just warm. Pour a small amount into a bowl for each child, and invite the children to sprinkle nutmeg and cinnamon over the warm milk. Then let them lap up the milk with a spoon.
• Make a large paw print cake by using one round cake as the paw and four small cupcakes around the top half as the toes. When you serve the cake and sing “Happy Birthday”, let your guests meow between each verse (“Happy Birthday to you, MEOW…”).
• Rename cupcakes “Kitty-cakes”, and decorate each to look like a cat face. Use a green jelly bean cut in half lengthwise as the eyes, half of a pink or red jelly bean (cut in half widthwise) as the nose, and pieces of shoestring licorice as the whiskers. To make pointed ears, cut round cookies into four quarters with a serrated knife. Place two pieces, pointed side up, into the frosting as ears. Vanilla wafer cookies or crème filled sandwich cookies work well for the ears.
• Another option is to decorate cupcakes to look like a paw print. After frosting the cupcakes, use one junior mint candy as the paw pad and four brown M&Ms as the toes.
• Serve drinks with shaped silly straws.