Possessive Plural: showing quantities per possessor

I just posted this question at Wordreference: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2470982&p=12436746#post12436746 Regarding the possessive plural: 1 cat: A cat's toy. 2+ cats: The cats' toys. Grammatically, how do you distinguish between each cat possessing one toy vs each cat possessing multiple toys? Or is that not possible in this formulation? My attempt: 2+ cats: The cats' toys. (one toy per cat?) 2+ cats: The cats' toys. (multiple toys per cat?) The best response I've seen there was the following, which seems accurate: "I'm not sure cats have a sense of ownership about toys, but as regards grammar, I don't think you can tell. All you know is that there are several cats and several toys. It's even possible that there are fewer toys than cats, and they have to share. "