Apps for Sad Cats

Apps for Sad Cats – story by Liam Sweeny.

I love useless things. No, I don’t mean the Oscar Meyer weinermobile with monster truck tires I just bought this morning. That is going to be useful, I promise you that. I mean like leashes for kids and sweaters for cats, things that okay, they do have a use, but do we really need them?

I’ll probably catch flack about the child leash, but I grew up without one because my leash was the promise of a buttwhooping that I would’ve got in I spent the day playing in traffic (there’s more truth to this than I’m comfortable admitting.)

So I hear about an app that sounds all kinds of useful. The app is called Tably. It is a cat reader. I’m sorry, that’s all I can think to call it. A cat reader. You snap a selfie of your little kitty, and it tells you whether or not that kitty is in pain. And it’s very scientific, using ear and head position, eye-narrowing, muzzle tension, and how their whiskers change. And of course, it’s AI because that’s the new “organic.”

Does the average person need this? I have a cat. She’s my little shitnose and she has fifty-three variations of her name, none that she responds to. And if she’s in pain, I have an app for that already. It’s called getting jumped on at three in the morning until I let her sleep between my legs under the covers. That’s my app.

I don’t know too many cat owners that aren’t intimately aware of how their little furball is feeling. This app would be great for people who wear mood rings because they can’t tell if they’re sad or they ate a spoiled chicken tender.

So I declare this app useless. When the human one comes out, I might reevaluate our position.

More from Liam Sweeny…