Cats often scarf their food down as if they haven’t eaten in a week. Are we feeding them enough?
Not all cat food is created equal, and many cats say they’re not getting enough nutrients daily. We asked six cats if their nutritional needs are being met and if their humans are feeding them enough.
Herbert Augustus Lardfellow
“That’s a joke, right? I’m starving over here. Look at me, I’m practically skin and bone!” – Herbert Augustus Lardfellow, 4, barrister
Slim Smudge
“I meow and meow and meow, and all I get are three cans of wet food a day, a bowl of dry and six snacks. I’m constantly hungry.” – Slim Smudge, 9, executive vice purrsident
Sir Snacksalot
“No! I often go two, sometimes three hours between meals. It’s torture!” – Sir Snacksalot, 2, sommelier
Pâté Pete
“Does it look like I get enough calories?” – Pâté Pete, 7, office meownager
Double-Stuffed Oreo
“When you’re as meowscular as I am, you need 10 or 20 times as much protein as a typical cat. I can feel my meowscles wasting away.” – Double-Stuffed Oreo, 5, investment banker
Mr. Delicious
“Too…weak. Can barely…meow. Need Temptations…now…please.” – Mr. Delicious, 3, analyst
We asked cats to weigh in on the ongoing royal drama.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the duke and duchess of Sussex, have gone on a months-long media blitz blaming the UK’s royal family for allegedly being unwelcoming, saying some really mean stuff, and in the case of Prince William, beating poor Harry up.
The self-exiled sort-of royals have appeared in Netflix specials, their own podcasts on Spotify, interviews with major media figures, and most recently released Harry’s ghostwritten autobiography, Spare, in which the prince claims he was “bred” to provide “spare parts” for “Willie” in case the vaunted heir to the British throne needed an extra lung, kidney or todger. (Harry mentions the royal member 15 times in the book, according to reporters who keep track of such important things.)
The prince — who is current fifth-in-line to the throne — has other grievances, mostly against the UK press, Piers Morgan, the Skokie Illinois Barbershop Quartet, and his step-mother, Camilla. So far he hasn’t directed his ire at the Earl of Budderset.
What do cats think about the royal drama?
“Probably my stuffed bumblebee! But I like my bouncy ball and the birdie wand thingie my mom uses when we play too. Oh! Also, those little plastic rings from bottles! So much fun to bat around.” – Maisie, 2, bird-watcher
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I think we need more treats, a Seventh Snack if you will, to bridge the considerable gap between Sixth Snack and Fourth Meal.” – Custard, 6, food critic
“HEY CHECK IT OUT! HEY! WHEN I PLOP ONTO THE COUCH CUSHION IT LEAVES A ME-SHAPED FOSSIL!” – Fiona, 7 months, kitten paleontologist
“There is one last door that Must Be Opened: The refrigerator door. You know how much I hate closed doors, and that one needs to stay open, okay? What if I want to take a nap with the cold cuts or use a nice block of feta for a pillow?” – Felix, 9, debate coach
“I think humanity is a thin layer of bacteria on a ball of mud hurling through the void, existing to speed the entropic death of this planet. That said, until we felines develop opposable thumbs, you humans are a necessary evil. You may feed me now.” – Mr. Fluffy, 13, retired
“So I told that mountain lion, I says, ‘Look here, puma! I ain’t intimidated by your size or your growl. As long as this heavy glass door stands between us, I’m gonna talk all the trash I want, and you can’t do nuthin’!'” – Doris, 6, abrasive meower
We asked cats what they think about MeowTalk, an app designed to translate their meows to human language.
MeowTalk, an iOS/Android app that aims to translate your meows using a machine learning algorithm, is getting a new publicity push after a recent update. The app has proven particularly popular in Japan, a nation of cat lovers.
What do you think about MeowTalk?
“You’re telling me there’s a good chance my human understood me calling her a dim-witted biped who’s stingy with snacks?” – Midnight, 7, office supervisor
“Finally, a device that can translate all my loving utterances at 5 a.m. when my bowl’s empty!” – Cleo, 5, cushion tester
“If an app is translating our meows, then why do our humans still stink at giving us massages?” – Andre, 2, faucet operator
“You know what this means, don’t you? If my humans overheard me discussing plans for the feline takeover of Earth, I’m going to have to smother them in their sleep.” – Dragorth the Destroyer, 4, generalissimo
“Sometimes I like to meow in gibberish just to mess with the humans. LOL! Wait, how can this app translate Japanese meows AND American meows?” – Zelda, 3, princess
“CHECK IT OUT, THERE’S A KITTEN WHO LOOKS JUST LIKE ME BEHIND THE GLASS! HEY, STOP IMITATING ME! STOP THAT! IT’S REALLY ANNOYING! HEY!” – Christian, 3 months, archaeologist kitten
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.”
“Get to the choppah! Fill my bowl!” Cats and Arnold Schwarzenegger are a ridiculous and lulzy combination.
There’s so much negative and stressful nonsense online that occasionally something will come along and remind us that the internet can also be a platform for fantastic human creativity, silliness and hilarity.
If this isn’t one of those things, I don’t know what is. Some genius dreamed up the idea of cats sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of the meows we all know and (mostly) love. It’s glorious:
I love every ridiculous second of it, from the Schwarzeneggerian grunts to the insane babbling of the trio of cats watching birds from a windowsill, to the cat who looks at his human and says: “Come on! Come on! Do eeeit! Come on! We’ve got to go!”
It reminds me of comedian Pablo Francisco’s classic bit about Ahnold starring in a movie called “Little Tortilla Boy”:
Can you imagine your own cat(s) making Arnoldesque sounds instead of meowing? 🙂
Pain In The Bud 