PET TECH

Well, what’s the point in letting an animal (or animals) live in your house if you can’t use it as an excuse to buy some fancy tech?

BiOrb Tube

 from £140 / biorb.com

There’s nothing like coming home to the unconditional love of an affectionate guppy. Fish are by far the least annoying domestic animals… and with over three million UK households reportedly taking in a new pet since the start of the pandemic, we just hope most of them were smart enough to choose companionship of the aquatic kind.

But who’s got room for one of those old-school wall-filling aquariums? Well, we haven’t, so we’re quite enamoured with this much more modern take on fishkeeping from BiOrb: a classy tubular affair that holds 15, 30 or 35 litres of water but is no more than 41cm in diameter.

Set on either a black or white base, it comes with all the usual bits including a patented filter system that should make it relatively easy to keep clean. In fact, the only hard part will be keeping all the fish’s attention long enough for a serious discussion about which plants, rocks and bits of old wood they’ll share it with.

PetTracer

  from £40 (+ sub) / pettracer.co.uk

Cats just don’t like wearing stuff. You’ll know this already if you’ve ever tried to get yours to tolerate a harness, an anti-licking recovery cone or a full-body Christmas pirate costume.

This is a challenge for the makers of feline GPS tracking collars… and the PetTracer might just be the answer. No chunky lumps of strapped-on gadgetry here: the tech is all hidden inside the collar itself, which weighs just 34g and is low-profile enough to avoid any danger of landing your image-conscious pet with self-esteem issues.

What’s that thing on the left? Well, the tracker uses radio as well as GPS, allowing it to see through walls, and this is the receiver. It picks up your cat’s coordinates and uploads them via your home Wi-Fi so you can see them on an online map.

The receiver also doubles as a charging base, but you shouldn’t need that too often: the PetTracer’s patented tech promises 30 days of battery life. Which is impressive, especially in cat years.

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Wickedball

Once your cat has tortured and killed every mouse within a five-mile radius, you might have to find something else to keep the adorable little mite entertained. This should do it: it’s a fully autonomous chasing toy with automatic obstacle detection and three interaction levels. £40 / wickedbone.co.uk

Litter-Robot 3 Connect

£545 / litter-robot.com/uk

There’s not enough poo in this magazine. Allow us to redress the balance with this intelligent self-cleaning litter tray: smell-free, hassle-free, and stylish enough to be the faecal point of any modern living room.

You might be wondering how it works. Well, to start with, your cat trots up the little steps and does its unmentionable business in the usual way. Then, once the Litter-Robot detects that the coast is clear, it begins its sifting cycle: the whole central sphere rotates slowly through 360°, allowing the clean litter to trickle through a grille while the clumps of soiled stuff remain and, a few seconds later, slide down into the waste drawer. Then, as the rotation continues, the clean litter falls back into the tray via another grille, nice and level for the next visit. Magic!

For obvious reasons you’ll need to fill this with the kind of litter that forms good solid clumps… and you will have to empty the waste drawer every now and then, unless you can train the cat to do it.

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PetKit Cosy Pet Bed

It might look quite similar to the robot litter tray, but you will not be happy if your cat coils one off in here – it’s a temperature-controlled bed, to ensure your furry friend can always nod off somewhere warm without having to perch on a radiator. An app lets you adjust the temperature remotely. £135 / petkit.co.uk

Pawfit 2

£55 (+ sub) / pawfit.com

The best part of dog life is when you let them off the leash. It’s so uplifting to see them charging off to play with other dogs, roll around in mud and eat vomit. But the worst part is when they’re having such a great time they forget to come back – and that’s where the Pawfit 2 comes in.

Lightweight (30g) and waterproof, this collar-worn GPS device has a live tracking mode that sends a location update every five seconds. You can also set it to ping you a notification when your dog leaves its preset safety zone – and a built-in speaker means you can keep up your increasingly furious cries of “FENTON! FENTON!” even when the chase has moved well out of earshot.

An in-built accelerometer means you can also use it to track activity – thus the ‘fit’ part of ‘Pawfit’ – with an app that lets you monitor steps, distance, calories burned and active hours. Battery life depends on GPS usage, but expect six days tops. At least you can rinse off all the mud and vomit while it’s charging.

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Paw Buddy

Speaking of filth… if you’ve got a dog that goes outside, you probably have a Mud Daddy already. But this is a much simpler and lighter way to stop your hall carpet being turned into a scene from 1917. Just fill it with water then squeeze while combing or brushing those puddle-dipped paws. £13 / bootbuddy.com

Wickedbone

£90 / wickedbone.co.uk

There’s something macabre about dogs’ obsession with bones, isn’t there? Still, this one looks more cheerful than anything they’ll find in the flowerbeds of that neighbour whose wife you never see any more.

From the same people behind the cat-distracting Wickedball on p62, this humerus-shaped toy connects to your phone via Bluetooth and lets you steer it around the floor with an on-screen joystick. Even better, when you’re not there (or just have something better to do), its interactive mode sees it whizzing around the floor autonomously like a sort of robotic Adama Traore.

Battery life is rated at 40 minutes in drive mode (when you’re controlling it), and 4hrs when it’s doing its own thing. It has a repertoire of flips, spins and other moves, and reacts differently according to how it’s touched thanks to what the makers ambitiously call an ‘emotional system’. Heck, you might as well just get one of these and not bother having a dog.

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Skymee Dog Camera Treat Dispenser

If you’ve got a desperately empty life, you’re welcome to spend all day sitting in a corner watching your dog and occasionally throwing it a biscuit. If not, you can get this motion-detecting, treat-dispensing spycam to do it for you.

£120 / smartpetdevices.co.uk