by 
W
elcome to the Innovation Brief: Cats Edition™. My furry feline Spritz is the star of this week’s episode, weighing in on Meta’s new AI shopping tools, Google Home integrating with Gemini, and how Spritz might be giving me a call in the near future.
If you hate cats, just close this email now, as I’m going to spin a yarn (aggressive pun intended) on Cats & Technology.
Spritz is eight years old, and while domesticated housecats have been around for 10,000 years, the last decade has had some wild technological advances that affect their daily lives. My wife and I rescued Spritz and his sister Chai from the streets of Queens in 2018, where once they were nursed back to health, were injected with a microchip to register their identity.
As they got older (and much larger than anticipated) we purchased the Litter-Robot 4: an autonomous robotic litter box that cleans itself, weighs the cats, sends notifications and uses AI to find any abnormalities or health issues while they “do their business.” If you’re thinking I’ve taken my cat tech too far already, you’re damn right I have. I’m an early tech adopter! And he who hath never used an automatic toilet flusher can cast the first stone.
Some more quick hitters:
- At CES, I bought an AI-infused cat toy that “learned” cat behavior and mirrored their energy level for exercise. It overheated and almost broke keeping up with Spritz, and it basically “played dead” to match lazy Chai’s energy.
- Ring Doorbell’s “Search Party” feature wanted to use AI to help find lost dogs and cats by scanning neighborhood outdoor camera footage, until the social backlash had them cancel everything.
- Enter the pet phone from today’s brief, and we’ve reached peak absurdity. When will this ridiculous PetTech™ end?!
All these purchases later, I can confidently say that the best gadget I’ve gotten the cats over the years isn’t a gadget at all, it was a $15 cat canopy from Marshall’s. It’s 6 years old, no batteries or digital features, and gets used about 18 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So, even with all this flashy tech, sometimes the simplicity of a basic product is all you need… for cats, and for humans.