Breakdown of У неё есть кошачья игрушка.
она
she / it (for a feminine noun)
у
at, by
есть
is, there is, to have
игрушка
toy
кошачий
cat's
Questions & Answers about У неё есть кошачья игрушка.
Why do we use кошачья here instead of кошкина?
Both can translate as 'cat's', but they have different nuances. Кошкина refers to a specific cat (like saying 'the toy belonging to my cat Murochka'). Кошачья is a generic possessive adjective meaning 'feline' or 'intended for cats in general'. Since this is just a standard toy made for a cat, кошачья is the natural choice.
How is the word кошачья formed? Why does it have a soft sign?
It is a possessive adjective formed from кошка (cat). For many animals, possessive adjectives use the endings -ий for masculine, -ья for feminine, -ье for neuter, and -ьи for plural. Because игрушка is feminine, we use the feminine form кошачья. Notice how the stem consonant mutates from к to ш in the process.
Why is it У неё and not У её?
When a third-person pronoun (like он, она, оно, они) directly follows a preposition (in this case, у), you must add an н- to the beginning of it to make it easier to pronounce. Therefore, у её becomes у неё.
Why is кошачья игрушка in the nominative case? Isn't it the object she possesses?
In Russian, possession is expressed with the structure 'У + [possessor in genitive] + есть + [possessed item in nominative]'. Literally, this translates to 'By her exists a cat's toy.' Because the toy is the grammatical subject of the verb есть (is/exists), it must take the nominative case.
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