What to Do When Your Cat Is Addicted to Your Phone
If your cat is addicted to your phone, begin with a calm assessment. Does the cat own a phone? Have a password? Pay for data? Has the cat ever said, “I’ll come to bed in a minute,” then watched 43…
Steven Johnson
Steve is a patient cat whisperer who's fluent in both alley cat and purebred. He's been neck-deep in cat gadgets since 2019 — automatic litter boxes, cat DNA kits, smart feeders, cameras, the works — digging through specs and real owner reviews to figure out what's actually worth your money and what's just a fancy box. Focusing on pet technology for that long means he can spot a genuinely clever gadget from a mile away. He's based in San Jose but you'll usually catch him somewhere with his leash-trained cats, Luna and Cali, who moonlight as his extremely judgmental product testers.
I Bought Longer Leashes and Learned I Needed a Cat Tracker, Not a Cat Tracker App
Cali had moved maybe two inches in ten minutes, which for her was apparently a rich and challenging travel day. She was in a sunny patch of grass near my building with her paws tucked under her calico body, studying…
Luna Filed a Breakfast Complaint. We Needed an RFID Automatic Cat Feeder for Two Cats
The baby started crying twelve minutes into my meeting. I do not have a baby. I have Luna. When Luna really commits to a complaint, she produces a sound that lands somewhere between a tiny human in distress and a…
The Neighbor Cat Left a Clean Plate. The Timed Feeder for Wet Cat Food Did Not
The bowl was spotless, which made me more complacent than I should have been. I was standing in my neighbor’s kitchen on the first evening of a weekend cat-sitting assignment. Her cat, Princess Boo Boo, had appeared from the hallway,…
My Plan to Build a Catio With an Automatic Cat Door Opener
Luna started crying halfway through my meeting. Not meowing. Crying. The full baby-left-near-a-sliding-glass-door sound that makes people on a video call stop speaking and reconsider what kind of home office you are operating. “That’s my cat,” I explained. Luna looked…
My Cat Rode Roomba Like a Tiny UFO and Somehow the Floor Got Cleaner
The first time I saw Cali riding the robot vacuum, I did not think, “This will finally teach me something useful about robot vacuum expectations in cat homes.” I thought, “My cat has joined the space program.” This is how…
Steve vs. the Cat Litter That Keeps Invading the House
The enemy had breached the couch. That was the moment I stopped pretending this was a normal housekeeping issue. A normal housekeeping issue is a sock on the floor or a little cat hair on a chair. This was cat…
How to Take Great Photos of Your Cat (Even the Uncooperative Ones)
The camera roll is full of evidence that cats are hilarious, beautiful, and morally opposed to holding still once a phone appears. Learning how to take photos of your cat is less about convincing them to sit like a tiny…
Testing Luna with an At-Home Cat DNA Test Because Curiosity Finally Won
I decided to order an at home cat dna test because Luna yelled at a toy mouse. That is not the scientific version of the story, but it is the honest one. She had dragged this gray mouse into the…
Where to find a Pet Microchip Scanner near you and When to Buy Your Own
A pet chip scanner near me search sounds like a map problem. Most of the time, it is really a reliability problem. The dog showed up after hours. The shelter is closed. The clinic you trust is twenty minutes away…