The thing I love most about Saturday, besides it being the start of the weekend, is that people all over the world can come together and celebrate one thing – cats. There is nothing quite as satisfying and wholesome to me as the feline posting frenzy that occurs on this day every single week; photos of cats looking stupid, gifs of kittens being cute and small, videos of tigers snuggling up to piglets – it is all so damn adorable! I want to celebrate this day with my own cat, Teddy, by spamming this blog with pictures and anecdotes all about her, so that there can be no doubt in the mind of anyone who chances upon this page that I am, indeed, a crazy cat lady.
Just to hammer that last point home, it is the sanity of my mind that is going to be brought into question in this post, because I’m going to talk about how I got my cat addicted to technology. That’s right, Teddy has a problem, and it is in the shape of a computer monitor.
Normally on a lazy morning, I’ll sit in bed and watch youtube videos on my iPad, and normally Teddy couldn’t care less. However, one morning her interest was piqued by the movement on-screen – not inherently odd, sometimes she watches TV (I’ve honestly never seen anything more adorable than when she stroked the TV screen whilst watching The Lion King) but I found it somewhat amusing, and decided to see if there were any apps for cats, like an aquarium on a loop or something that she could watch for ten minutes and then be on her way. Lo and behold, there was an app, a few actually, so I downloaded one and then opened it up, and then this happened, for about two hours;
Ted is a pretty playful cat, she’ll pounce on anything that moves, but I wasn’t expecting her to be as engaged as she was, and certainly not for as long as she was. But she was a big fan of the app, if she had opposable thumbs she would give it a five-star rating on the app store, and probably find a way to open the app herself and play all day every day because now that is all she wants to do.
Since downloading this app, whenever I pull my iPad out, just the sound of it being set down on my bed leads her to run to it in anticipation. She actually watches youtube videos with me now, I kid you not, she even has a favourite YouTuber (Harry Makes It Up – for anyone who thinks they have the same tastes as my cat… no judgement) and even tried to write her a comment! Ok, so it was ‘ao z’, and sure it is most likely gibberish because she is a cat, but ‘ao’ sounds a lot like ‘meow’ so I find it suspicious…
And it is no longer confined to the iPad either; if I’m on my phone, she tries to play with it, literally attempting to bat it from my hands, and when I start my PC up, again, she is immediately by its side, ready to attack any mouse-like shapes that might cross the screen. She even throws tantrums if I don’t let her play with the damn app every day. She is addicted.
I introduced technology to a cat, and in doing so discovered that they are the animal equivalent of a technology-obsessed teenager. Go figure.