If your cat’s been copping an attitude around the house, cruising all over your countertops with that Simba strut, then you may have to choose the nuclear option, and call in a RoboCop CatNani: a little robot that patrols your countertops, and shoos your cat off onto the floor, where the bot can, presumably, mock its foe endlessly.
Slash Pets picked up on the story of the CatNani, after its creators made an Indiegogo page for the product. In the pitch video, it’s claimed that the CatNani will prevent CSP, or Counter Surfing Pets, which certainly plagues any home containing cats with too much pride. To defend the granite high ground against the great feline enemy, the CatNani utilizes essentially two tactics: an ultrasonic warning, and a harmless citronella spray.
The robot’s tactics are a bit more sophisticated than simply spraying and wailing at your cat like an angry Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park numero uno, however. It also has sensors that allow it to sense the edges of the countertop, as well as any objects that may be in its way. It seems that you’d need one for each of your countertops, however, and putting money on cats figuring out a way to knock something off a countertop seems like a smart bet.
CatNani mocking your cat after it has been defeated.
The team behind the CatNani contains some good minds, including a former research scientist at Amazon, and a datacenter developer. One of the team’s members mentioned another product he’s worked on, dubbed The Beerbelly. Here’s a CNN video of the product:
If you want a robo-patrol to keep bad little kitties off your countertops, the good news is, you can donate to the Indiegogo campaign. The bad news is the campaign is, as of this writing, only zero dollars toward its—flexible—$500,000 goal. (With 18 days left.)
What do you think about this little cat nanny? Is this the kind of kitty counterterrorism you need in your home? Let us know in the comments below!
Images: YouTube / CatNani
