Image credit: Building Brick Electric Waffle Maker

I’ve just moved into a new home with my partner, his adorable kitten and my awesome dog, so here are a few gadgets that cater to every species living in the home. Enjoy :D

I am a massive waffle fan. I don’t, however, have a waffle maker, otherwise I would forever be eating them and staying inside. Because waffles are so much better than having a social life.

Anyway, this product seems to encourage you to play with your food, which is pretty much not what I’ve been instructed to do my entire life, but hey.

The Building Brick Electric Waffle Maker creates 14 interlocking building-brick-shaped wafflies. You can stack them up and make structures like towers, houses, or spaceships. You could even cut the little pieces up and make dragons or waffle monsters.

I’m not sure how well the interlocking of the bits would work, unless you like your waffles solid as... well... bricks.

The Waffle Maker can create 10 short bricks, two long bricks, and two individual bricks at the same time. The aluminium die-cast moulds are non-stick, you plop in the batter and you’ve got yourself the makings of a construction masterpiece.

What if you did a Waffle Death Star? You may die if you try and eat it all. Death by Waffle Death Star. Not a bad way to go.

When you pledge $100 (about £82) to the Kickstarter campaign, you’ll get six construction plates instead of the original four.

The product can be shipped within the EU, China, the UK, and many more countries apparently, and the company will provide the appropriate adapter so you can start baking your waffly architecture.

You will also get your hands on an Official Guide to Waffle Brick Building. I want to see that!

“Combined with advanced facial-recognition tech and app, Petvation provides a brand-new access experience for your furry friends.” Aka, let’s just throw as much tech as we can at it.

This is a terminator-style pet door. Without the termination, obviously. We wouldn’t want the door to slide down and guillotine your cat.

So, the Petvation Smart Automatic Pet Door is powered with AI cameras and smart sensors, which detect when your furry friend wants to enter and exit your home. The door is designed for you to control who comes in, or when your pet is allowed to come and go. You can do it remotely, so when you’re at work you can make sure your pet has a nice pee break.

It also means you can stop any unwelcome visitors, like stranger-danger cats, birds, alligators or even raccoons, if you are from that part of the world. Myself, I would like to make friends with trash pandas. I think they’re adorable with their wee hands and faces. By the way, did you see the video with the raccoon taking some candy floss and dipping it in the water to get it ready for munching and then the sweet treat dissolves? Heart-breaking. I would give them all my candy floss if they came through the Petvation. Access for all, I say!

To help with this kind of obstacle today (unwanted visitors, not dissolving candy floss), mechanical pet doors with smart collars let your floofers in and out. But according to the Petvation team, animals like cats aren’t too good with bulky battery-powered collars. But then they would say that, wouldn’t they? Cat owners, let me know if this is a thing, please.

Petvation is apparently armed with one of the most powerful, cutting-edge AI chips, that lets it run complex facial-recognition algorithms fully offline and only open for a familiar face.

According to the makers, two sets of high-resolution infrared cameras are built into the door frame, with 120-degree wide-​angle lenses on each side, along with invisible night-vision fill lights. When an approach is detected, you are alerted via the app, and you can say yay or nay.

The Petvation’s motor and mechanical controls keep the door latch locked when not in action. Supposedly, it uses three independent safety mechanisms that work in sync to keep your pet safe, with fast-acting sensors to detect when they approach and pass through the door. There’s also an anti-pinch mechanism to stop them being hurt by your AI smarter-than-you door.

As I write, the campaign is at £64,066 (had £8,146 as its goal), so I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be a thing very soon.

This looks a little space-age, but our kitten would love this kind of smelly stimulation.

The Hunting Game Box is a “scent-based food treasure box”. Our curious cattos love to explore and hunt, as is custom. So, the people behind the Box thought it would be a good idea to hunt at home. Not hunt the cat. The cat hunting food. You know.

Their sensitive sense of smell means they capture the ‘scent map’ of the air, and the Hunting Box focuses on stinks to guide the felines to their target.

Apparently, you can put any wet food or raw meat into the Box (it has built-in UVC sterilisation, so it doesn’t get ick and the food lasts longer).

The device adjusts the scent concentration depending on the size of the hunting area. Also, the stink isn’t noticeable to us, just the cats, whose sense of smell is 14 times stronger than ours. They say. Can’t prove otherwise unless I got a Box of my own. (‘Hint.’)

By sneaking it anywhere in the house, the cat will have a fun time playing hide and seek, and you probably won’t have to entertain them as much at night time when they go bat-poop crazy, as I’ve come to find – unless it’s just a kitten thing. That girl is WILD after 8pm.

The gadget comes with a two-​year warranty and is made from recyclable materials. It’s also said to be scratch resistant and durable. Good thing, because of the sharp death claws. Ouch.

It’s going for $169 (about £138), but you get a 70 per cent discount if you pledge $49 to the campaign.

CATTO OWNER FRIENDS, PLEDGE YOUR SOULS. 

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