When a life’s work is through, what is left but play? Legend has it that a life of leisure awaits us all in retirement. Call us crazy, but we somehow have a hard time envisioning our parents obsessively tending to the very Tamagotchis, Pokemon and various other electronic doo-dad pet substitutes that made our junior high teachers wish the PTA would just approve teachers to carry concealed EMP devices.
Still, seniors remain the one demographic to lag behind kids, teenagers and even we full-fledged adults that legendary toymaker Hasbro has yet to win over. Therefore, the architects of our childhoods who birthed My Little Pony, G.I. Joe and Transformers have gifted the elderly of the world a lifelike robotic cat that thrives upon regular affection.
The $99 Companion Pet Cat leads Hasbro’s newly minting Joy For All line of senior-oriented “toys”, completely with responsive light and motion sensors that trigger its pleased reactions to petting, behind held, and loving hugs, complete with realistic and responsive “purring” vibrations and sounds. The Cat reportedly even leans its head automatically into the petting it picks up, just to give the appearance of being an attention-starved adorable jerk. Keep petting its back, and it eventually drops a hint by rolling over to present its belly for even more soothing rubbing.
Leave it alone a while – say, just a few minutes – and it eventually spares the four C-batteries by dozing off until petted/pestered again. All the loving and reciprocated affection, none of the litter box smells or items dumped to the floor by a spoiled little asshole-kitty.
