The AI-powered device ensures felines never have to see the bottom of their bowls again.
NEW YORK — Life is full of unpleasantness, like being able to see the bottom of your bowl. But what if someone told you he could fix that?
Enter Buddy the Cat’s SmartHuman Feeding System™, a device that harnesses the power of AI and cutting-edge hardware to make sure you never see the bottom of your bowl again.
SmartHuman was designed with weight sensors and an AI-enabled camera system to determine when the food in your bowl is getting low. If the on-board algorithms detect low levels of kibble, SmartHuman sends a text to your servant every 15 seconds until the device registers fresh kibble in the bowl.
And if the unthinkable should happen and you really are subjected to the horrific sight of the bottom of your bowl, SmartHuman’s built-in klaxon and emergency lights guarantee your human servants won’t have a second’s peace until they do what they’re supposed to and promptly refill your bowl. The system even requires the human to issue an apology before the sound and lights subside.
“I haven’t had to meow in annoyance or raise a paw once since I got the SmartHuman system,” raved Def the Defenestrator, a popular catfluencer with more than 240,000 followers on Meower. “The threat of getting bombarded with 110-decibel alerts to refill my bowl is enough to make my human servant get off her lazy behind and make sure my bowl is refilled before there’s a problem.”
The SmartHuman’s inventor has a background in feline teleportation and string cheese theory, but was prompted to design his device when he saw the bottom of his dry food bowl twice in as many months.
“I was literally starving,” Buddy said, adding that his “lazy human servant made me wait four minutes and 13 seconds before he refilled my bowl” during the second incident.
Vowing never to go hungry again, the entrepawneur built the first SmartHuman prototype in his garage, using a Raspberry Pi and a digital scale he ordered off Amazon.
He brought his idea to Shark Tank in late 2021 and successfully pitched Mr. Wonderful, who bought a 15 percent stake in SmartHuman™ in exchange for a $150,000 investment. The product entered production earlier this summer and is now available in stores and online.
“Cats love the SmartHuman™, but humans? Not so much,” Buddy the Cat admitted.
Mr. Wonderful (Kevin O’Leary) outbid fellow Sharks Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran and Laurie Greiner to partner with Buddy the Cat and invest in SmartHuman™.
Not one to rest on his laurels, the inventive feline said he’s working on a software update that will make the device compatible with wet food as well. In early beta testing, SmartHuman successfully prompted humans to feed wet food to their feline masters on time. Wet Mode includes a new feature as well: If the wet food remains untouched after a three-minute timer elapses, SmartHuman sends another text to the human, informing them the food isn’t satisfactory and should be replaced with another meal.
“Humans are stupid, and they don’t understand when we meow to them in complaint because we don’t feel like eating tuna or whatever on a given night when we’d prefer turkey,” Buddy said. “When this update goes live, cats will be able to enjoy meals of their choosing, every time.”
Meowfioso cats planned the biggest score of their lives, demanding UPS’ entire inventory of boxes.
ATLANTA — A gang of cats led by notorious crime boss “Lucky” Louis Pawtenza surrounded UPS headquarters on Monday, blocking all exits and demanding the company relinquish its inventory of boxes.
With hundreds of his soldiers, capos and mercenaries pointing weaponry at the delivery company’s office building, Pawtenza shouted into a megaphone and listed his demands.
“We want them all! Corrugated, fiber board, triple wall!” he boomed. “Fold-up, telescoping, multi-depth, tubes! Every traditional square box you have! And don’t forget the bubble wrap, or we’ll scent-mark your entire building so badly, it’ll have to be condemned. Don’t think we won’t do it!”
CNN, which is also headquartered in Atlanta, had news helicopters circling the scene of the standoff while a panel of talking heads weighed in on the situation.
“I don’t think [UPS CEO] Carol Tomé has a choice here,” said Jeffrey Tubin’, the network’s legal analyst. “She has to relinquish the boxes. That’s a small price to pay compared to having your HQ defiled by an army of angry cats.”
Cats hardened by a life of crime, like Angelo “The Fish Calzone” Gattacio, have become more bold in recent years as the FBI has turned its focus to terrorism.
Not everyone agreed. On Fox News, The Five co-host Dana Pawrino said UPS “can’t afford to look weak here.”
“If you give in to these demands, you’re only encouraging these cats,” she said. “Who’s to say they won’t show up to FedEx, or God forbid the Postal Service, tomorrow and try the same thing? If you’re a company like W.B. Mason, and you know another company has given in, what do you do? Turn your corporate HQ into a fortress?”
“Dig a moat around your building,” co-host Waldo Rivera said. “Cats won’t go near water.”
In the meantime, Atlanta police were trying to diffuse the situation.
At a makeshift command center, police brass huddled around a digital display of the UPS facility, while a trained hostage negotiator made contact with the meowfiosi.
“Lucky Louis? I’m Sergeant Williams and I’m going to be your negotiating partner today,” a veteran cop spoke into a phone. “What do you say we make a good-faith effort to establish the beginnings of trust here? If you allow five hostages from the UPS building to leave, I’ll have 200 cans of pate and fresh water brought over to you guys. Then we can start talking about how to get what you want, and what we want. Deal?”
Top image credit Dsigns/Redbubble, “Catfather” image via Pinterest, mobster cat via Etsy
Cats don’t accept blame, George Carlin once observed. Even when you catch them red-handed.
A few nights ago I was watching the Yankees lose when Buddy jumped on the coffee table, settled into a loaf position and started doing what he does best — knocking things onto the floor.
Usually it’s remote controls, water bottles, my phone. Usually he has the good sense not to knock over glasses with liquid in them, or plates of food. But not always.
Bud turned, looked me in the eye, meowed and proceeded to swipe a tub of wasabi peas (just the like one pictured above) off the table. The package hit the ground and popped open, spilling the peas and their powdered wasabi coating all over the floor.
“They came down in a big spaceship, and they said ‘Buddy, we’re gonna spill your human’s snacks and then blame it on you!’ And I said ‘No, aliens! Not on my watch!’ But they distracted me with turkey…”
Bud looked at me, trilled, then took off, perhaps put off by the scent of the wasabi.
A few seconds later he returned as I was sweeping them up, trilled again, and looked at me like “What happened, dude? Someone knocked over your wasabi peas? That’s terrible!”
If he could speak — you know, besides his incessant trilling and meowing — the conversation would probably go something like this:
“It was you! You did it!”
“No I didn’t.”
“I watched you do it! You made eye contact with me as you casually slapped them off the coffee table!”
“You’re mistaken. Perhaps it was another cat who looks like me.”
“You’re the only cat who lives here!”
“Then it was a chalupacabra.”
“You mean a chupacabra? Those don’t actually exist, you know. Have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor?”
“Aliens, then. Yeah. Probably aliens. I keep trying to tell you, aliens are responsible for those hairballs. Remember the time you found puke in the bed? That was aliens too. I told them ‘Be gone, aliens! You’re not welcome here!’ but they just can’t help themselves….”
As George Carlin said, “Cats don’t accept blame.” Even when they do things right in front of you, apparently.
Humans are an invasive species who are spectacularly adept at destroying life, a new study has found.
Homo sapiens are an invasive species who do irreparable harm to the environment and other animals on an unprecedented scale, a new study by the Feline Science Institute has found.
The results prompted feline scientists to add homo sapiens, commonly known as humans, to a database of destructive and invasive animals maintained by the Academy of Scientific Studies.
Cat scientists have only just glimpsed the breadth of human-initiated impact on other animals, Dr. Oreo P. Yums, lead author of the newest research paper, told reporters.
“We found humans are astonishingly, almost indescribably destructive,” Yums said. “For instance, although they fret about birds, humans kill more than a billion of them a year just with their skyscrapers, which birds are prone to fly into due to their mirrored surfaces. Add in wind turbines, cell towers, power lines, habitat loss and slow die-offs due to chemicals, and by conservative estimates we’re talking about billions of birds killed by humans every year without even tallying active measures like hunting.”
Humans have killed off an estimated 70 percent of the world’s wildlife in the last 50 years alone and show no sign of stopping. Oceans are overfished, animals like pangolins and big cats are ruthlessly hunted to extinction to feed demand within the Chinese traditional medicine market, and human addiction to palm oil means the “two-legged demon monsters don’t even have sympathy for their fellow primates,” mewologist Charles Clawin said.
“In Borneo and Sumatra there are entire schools, filled to capacity, for critically endangered orangutan babies who were orphaned by human contractors clearing ancient jungles to make room for more palm oil plantations,” he said. “Often, the humans use industrial equipment to tear down trees while the orangutans are still in them. Other times, they dispatch the mothers with pistols, not realizing there are babies clinging to them.”
In Africa, where the elephant population has plummeted in the last century, more than 110,000 elephants have been slaughtered in the past 10 years alone for their tusks. The elongated incisors are used to make jewelry and piano keys, and items made from ivory have become a status symbol in China, where growing middle and upper classes seek to show off their wealth with luxuries.
In 2019, Chinese businesswoman Yang Felan, dubbed the “Ivory Queen,” was arrested and charged with smuggling $2.5 million worth of tusks from Tanzania to her home country. Yang, “a key link between poachers in East Africa and buyers in China for more than a decade,” was a respected businesswoman, investor, restaurateur and vice chairwoman of the China-Africa Business Council.
“Poachers continue to slaughter elephants and our big cat brothers and sisters,” said Luna Meowson, who tracks the illegal wildlife market for the University of Nappington. “Having extirpated tigers from virtually their entire range, poachers are turning to South America, where jaguar poaching increased 200 fold between 2015 and 2020. It never stops.”
A human hunter poses victoriously after heroically slaying a lion (panthera leo) from atop his trusty steed, a mobility scooter, after a team of guides drove him around the bush in an air-conditioned SUV, then lured the animal directly into his line of sight. A female of the species, presumably his mate, looks on proudly.
Although the earliest details remain murky, fossil records show Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The invasive species, which has a gestation period of about nine months, began rapidly breeding and immediately went to war with fellow members of the genus Homo.
After wiping out two-legged rivals including Homo neanderthalensis, Homo altaiensis, Homo denisova and Homo bodoensis, the victorious Homo sapiens set their eyes on other species. Throughout their history they’ve also proven remarkably adept at murdering themselves and continue to hone their skills.
“Those OG humans, they had to really work at slaughtering other species and extirpating wildlife,” said Chonkmatic the Magnificent, King of North American cats. “They didn’t have attack helicopters, stealth bombers, tanks, carrier battle groups, daisy cutters, artillery, mortars, phosphorous, napalm, biological weapons, or even small arms like rifles. In those days a pimply kid from Oklahoma sitting in an air-conditioned base in Virginia couldn’t wipe out an entire city 5,000 miles away by pressing a button ordering a drone to drop a nuke. They had to put some sweat into violence, you know?”
Breakthroughs in recent centuries have led to innovative and more convenient ways for Homo sapiens to author mass destruction and render entire sections of the Earth lifeless.
The species, known for its aptitude for tool-making in addition to eating ultra-processed foods and staring at screens, began with simple tools of destruction like the Mark I Spear, early bows and even torches. Over the centuries they innovated, coming up with clever and inventive new ways to inflict pain and end life until the advent of electricity, the industrial era and the brutally destructive war machines of modern times.
Human scientists have tried to obscure their species’ impact on wildlife and the planet by declaring species like felis catus “invasive” and “alien,” but even if cats are “guilty of grabbing a forbidden snack every now and then,” they don’t have the coordination, technology or will to carve up habitats, render entire swaths of the Earth uninhabitable with nuclear fallout, create Everest-size mountains of garbage, or effortlessly drive millions of species to extinction, Clawin said.
“They’re so good at it, they don’t even have to try,” he noted, pointing out human accidents or incidents of negligence like oil spills and chemical run-off into rivers. “We tend to think of humans out there with shotguns and rifles, cackling maniacally as they shoot anything that moves. And, sure, they do that, especially in places like Texas where the sight of any animal always prompts the question ‘Should we shoot it?’ But our research shows they can wipe out entire categories of fauna in their sleep. It’s remarkable.”
One kitty didn’t check if the coast was clear before he did something humans didn’t expect, and now the two-legs are onto us!
A Very Important Message from Buddy to all cats:
My brothers and sisters,
I meow most urgently to inform you that human mischief knows no bounds, and now the two-legged scoundrels have resorted to using their magical glowing rectangles to spy on us and learn our most well-kept secrets!
It would appear the glowing rectangles are more than mere hypnosis machines which humans stare at for hours. Apparently they also do the bidding of their human masters, and one of these blasted machines surreptitiously used its magic to capture images of a kitty opening one of those infernal portals humans are so fond of:
This is not good! Humans are supposed to think we’re incapable of manipulating the simple mechanisms that keep these “doors” closed. Now they may take drastic measures to confine us, all because this cat was sloppy and opened a door without checking if the coast was clear.
I urge you to exercise the utmost caution before humans capture “footage” of one of us shapeshifting to get through a small space, or even using our powers of teleportation!
It is imperative that humans continue to believe we’re just fluffy, adorable and innocent little fur babies who do amusingly derpy things that make for cute viral videos.
Suppose humans learn the full range of our powers. What then? Will they evict us from our homes out of fear of what we might do to them? Or worse, will they force us to stoop to canine levels and do things for them, like “fetch” slippers or sniff for illegal catnip in airport luggage? The horror!
Pain In The Bud 