NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - With Christmas just nine days away, retailers are running short on some hot holiday toys that have left some shoppers doing some last-minute scrambling.

Toys like FurReal Friends and Kasey the Kinderbot have become almost as scarce as a Honus Wagner T206 baseball card in the last few weeks, as demand for these toys has come as close to a fever pitch as might be expected during what is otherwise considered a ho-hum holiday shopping season.

Susan McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Paramus, N.J.-based Toys "R" Us, said FurReal Friends, Hasbro's electronic plush cat that reacts to touch, is hard to find on the shelves. She said that a German television reporter seeking an on-site shot of the mechanical cats at the Bailey's Crossroads, Va., store was out of luck: The last FurReal cat sold out before the crew arrived at the store.

"We've still got them coming into the distribution center, but once they're on the shelves, they sell," McLaughlin said.

Toys like Hasbro's FurReal Friends are hard to find on store shelves. (CNN/file)

Meanwhile, Kasey the Kinderbot by Fisher Price has also disappeared. Customers were ordering them online after the stores ran out, but Toys "R" Us is now even out of stock online, McLaughlin said.

Wal-Mart says it is has managed to keep up its stock of FurReal Friends, but just barely. There are spot shortages company-wide, spokesman Tom Williams said.

"We're keeping up, but it's a challenge," Williams said.

At FAO Schwarz, which also owns Zainy Brainy and The Right Start, FurReal Friends is also gone from the shelves, along with Fisher-Price's Chicken Dance Elmo, which sold out this past weekend, spokesman Alan Marcus said. Also out of stock at FAO is a spinning top game called Bey Blades.

Other hot items, such as Mattel's Barbie as Rapunzel and a popular line of dolls called Bratz, are selling briskly, but so far, there have been no shortages.

Certainly these toys are popular, but shortages are also occurring because retailers, worried that the sluggish economy would pinch consumer spending, have kept holiday inventories taut, making it harder for them to keep the hottest toys and gifts on store shelves, some merchants and analysts have said.

"I think a lot of retailers were playing it a bit more conservative," FAO's Marcus said. "If you look at it three years ago, everyone was overflowing with inventories and then just stuck with it at the end. Retailers, including ourselves, have played it a bit more conservative with our orders."

KB Toys said last week that its inventories will be 20 percent lighter this year compared with last year, in anticipation of more sluggish sales.

Saddled with debt, job worries and fears of a potential war with Iraq, consumers are likely to be cautious this holiday season, analysts have said. The National Retail Federation (NRF), the industry's biggest trade group, predicts a 4 percent rise in holiday sales. That's more optimistic than some forecasts, but comes in at the lower end of the group's forecasts over the past decade.

Supporting these concerns about cautious consumer spending Monday were the latest sales figures from some of the nation's biggest chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT: up $1.05 to $51.59, Research, Estimates) and Federated Department Stores Inc. (FD: up $0.19 to $28.92, Research, Estimates), the parent of Macy's and Bloomingdale's.

Both companies said sales remained on track to meet company expectations, but are coming in closer to the low end of those forecasts.

Still, that doesn't mean the holiday shopping season will ultimately be a bust. With just nine days left, "It seems to us that a lot of people still have great portions of their shopping left to do," said Ellen Tolley, an NRF spokeswoman.

Tolley's conviction is bolstered by Big Research, a firm that measures consumer attitudes and sentiment. The firm says that, on average, consumers have 48.6 percent of their shopping done. That means half of their shopping must be crammed into the next week and a half.

Marcus of FAO Schwarz echoes Tolley's sentiments. "The next 10 days will really tell the tale," he said.