The cat is less than one year old. Our 17 year old cat does not engage in this at all and hisses at the kitten for even trying to start a game of tag. This makes me wonder if that origin is more related to predator/prey.
All mammalian species have something in common.
When mammals are young we all love playing. This is true for humans, dogs, elephants, primates, cats and so on.
But play ends up disappearing as the mammal gets older. Compare a playful baby elephant to an adult elephant. The baby elephant loves playing. Not just with other elephants but with humans and dogs and so on. But older elephants are more likely to watch and less likely to play.
This is why your 1 year old cat loves playing while your 17 year old cat doesn’t.
It’s a very interesting phenomenon
for working out and keeping fit!... oh, hmmm, I guess that's glaring evidence that working out and keeping fit are not beneficial after all
Adult lions don’t play like baby lions yet adult lions are still fit.
It's even thought that the first domesticated dogs pre-domesticated themselves to an extent because the less suspicious wolves were able to use human settlements' trash middens as a food source.