Edited by: Ingrid King. Last updated: November 1, 2022 by Crystal Uys

Science has proven that watching cat videos online is good for you. A 2015 study from Indiana University Bloomington found that watching cat videos boosts positive energy and emotions. But is it the same for our cats?

video games for cats

Videos showing birds and rodents have been around for a long time, but the explosion of apps made specifically for cats has raised the question among cat parents and feline behaviorists whether all that screen time can harm the good. – to be cats. These apps designed to stimulate cats’ hunting instincts might be cute to the human observer, but I can’t help but think that hitting virtual prey moving across a screen is mostly frustrating to our feline friends.

Mikel Delgado, PhD, Certified Cat Behavior Consultant at Feline Minds, providing on-site consultations for cat sitters, shelters, and pet-related businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area and remote consultations worldwide, agrees with me. “They don’t get any tactile experience; they have no smell; they don’t get any sense of movement with their mustaches,” she told Experience Magazine. Like Mikel, I worry that these apps will confuse and frustrate cats. “It might violate some sort of property of physics or nature that the cat might expect.”

Ruby has occasionally played the Cat Fishing iPad game, but Allegra shows very little interest in screens. None of my cats ever cared much for videos featuring birds, preferring the real thing outside the windows.

A poor substitute for real game time

My biggest concern with video games for cats is that they will be used as a poor substitute for real play time. These games not only fail to satisfy cats’ hunting instincts, but they also take away from them one of the most important aspects of playtime, namely the interaction between cat and human.

Are your cats interested in digital games?

Photo by Kanashi on Unsplash

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