Have a cat that won’t stay off your counters? I do. I finally got fed up with it enough to do something about it: scare the crap out of him with a motion-detecting blender (while recording the results for my own amusement, of course).
Confused at what you’re looking at? This is a repeating shot of security camera footage of my cat jumping on the counter – in search of a plant to munch on – and initiating my Blender Defender. Take a look at the following comic to get a better understanding 🙂
Videos
Sorry, but you’re going to have to pretend you can hear an extremely loud blender while you watch these clips
Details
If you were to walk in my house, you may see something you dont normally see in a kitchen. On the wall, to the left of my sink is a webcam (network camera). It is plugged into the network jack and screwed into the wall plate cover, supporting itself. It doesnt get it the way, nor do we ever have to think about it. The camera is being monitored for motion by my computer upstairs in our office.
The camera itself is one of the cheapest network cameras out there, the DCS-900. It can be picked up for about $120 or so. There are a couple network cameras that are a little cheaper, but the D-Link one is pretty rugged and makes it easy to get into the raw feeds, something that cant be said for many other cameras.
As you can see from the videos above, the blender and the strobe light are both controlled by an X10 unit. The unit is sent an on or off command from the computer running upstairs by means of an X10 Firecracker. The Firecracker is just a wireless X10 transmitter that plugs into your serial port. I wont get into explaining it much here, but one thing to note is that is happily co-exists with my CM11A unit.
The computer upstairs is running the ‘motion‘ library for linux. As soon as it detects something moving on camera, it starts recording frames. While it is saving frames, it also initiates another Perl script I wrote that sends an X10 command to turn on the blender and strobe, wait 3 seconds, then turn them off. After the script is done detecting motion, it then splices all the JPG frames together using ffmpeg and saves the resulting movie as a SWF file, which you can see above. Finally, after it saves the movie, I have it set up to email me a link to the movie so I can see the results from where ever I’m at (remotely by using my phone).
Is this cruel?
Of course not! To teach a cat not to do something, it has to get the idea that what it is doing is a bad thing. One way to do so is to sternly tell your cat ‘NO’ when it does something. The cat may learn that it is bad, but more often than not, the cat learns that it’s not supposed to it when your around. This is not what you want. The best way to teach the cat not to get on a counter is to take yourself out of the picture. If the cat jumps up on the counter and is greeted with a scare, it will learn that the counter is not a very nice place to be. The cat is never harmed, but it’s instincts tell is that this may be something to be feared. Just like a vaccuum. The cat doesn’t like it at all, so it stays away.
Some will say that the cat is trying to eat the plant because he needs it for his digestion. In this case, it’s just not true. Our cat doesn’t simply eat our plants. He sees them as a toy. He plays with the stalks, digs them out, etc. We find leaves in the other rooms half the time. And, yes, he does get grass every once in a while.
Project Cost
The table below shows how much money would normally go into a project like this. This isn’t to say that I’ve spent this much, as I already had everything lying around the place, but if somebody else were to start this project, this may be what they should expect to pay.
| Item | Notes | Price |
| Strobe Light | Bought from Spencer’s | 20.00 |
| Blender | Housewarming present, woot. | 50.00 |
| X10 Firecracker | Check Ebay and Amazon if you’re looking for one | 12.00 |
| X10 Appliance Module | You wouldnt want a Lamp Module for this. | 12.00 |
| Network Camera | D-Link DSC-900 | 120.00 |
| $214.00 |
😮
Sorry Jean, no longer. 😛
Did anyone else think that there was some lightning strikes in the blender before they saw the strobe light?
when will new ones be available?
That last video (the one where kitty at first runs off in one direction and then does an apparant mid air course – correction) had me laughing so hard I spit coffee all over my computer screen! Thanks for the much needed laugh!
You should submit these to America's Funniest Home Videos! I'm positive you're sitting on a gold mine here!
😛 hahahaha fucking cats 🙂
i loved it 🙂
The line "The cat may learn that it is bad, but more often than not, the cat learns that it's not supposed to it when your around." is so true. Cats are funny like that. This is great stuff, thanks
🙂 😛 😆 🙁 😉 😀 😐 😎 😕 😮 😥 👿 :red: 🙄 😈
💡
Uh, why is the last clip of a different cat? Did the first cat learn not to jump up there before you were done being amused by it?
We have the same problem with our cat, George. This is a great idea. He knows it's wrong when we're there to correct him, but who knows what he does when we're gone……? Thanks for sharing!
You sons of bitches!Ithink you're the worst and the gayest people at making movies of scaring the living shit out of cats.My mom and grandma could do better than that.
The movies were great!
[b]@Arya[/b] and [b]@Argetlam[/b]: You DO realize that we can tell when the same person comments twice, right?
Pretty funny!! I like the one with the black cat running UNDER the faucet before turning around. Stubborn cats might not go for the green so much if you remember to throw some lettuce at them when making a salad. It took me years of cat ownership to realize that kitty really needs some greens in their diets if they can't go outside. Don't worry, they won't get sick on the lettuce like they do on grass or your plants.
👿 👿 👿 I LOVER YOUR SITE 👿 👿 👿
is this cruel? i think so.
I'd like do the same thing to you.
🙂 😛 😆 🙁 😉 😀 😐 😎 😕 😮 😥 👿 :red: 🙄 😈
💡 ➡ :exclaim: ❓
;):evil::red::roll::twisted::idea::arrow:
Oh my god, that was too funny! Thanks for the laugh.
meow. that was funny.
Cats eating plants aren't a sign of digestion aid – cats are carnivores. It's usually an indication of insufficient nutrition in the diet, often caused by eating grocery brand foods. That said, if the cat is playing with it, it's most likely just the smell and texture of the plant that he finds appealing.
I think your deterrent setup is brilliant! What you're doing is a very effective training aid. Some animals are just too smart for basic training.
Hi
love this website me and my buddie found it when we were at skool!
Cya 😉
awesome – In Perl, are you just writing ascii strings to the COM port for the firecracker?
hope you don't mind, am trying to implement w/slightly diff hw config.
Thanks
how about buying your cat some salad, if he wants it so much
There are already motion sensitive light switches which turn on a light when someone walks into a room. Couldn't they also turn on a blender? Seems a lot simpler than a camera, a computer, and a strobe. I'd love to rig up something similar for my cat…
This was awesome! Great post!
telling a cat no and trainging at it is one thing, scaring it like that is unnecessary and to be frank, pretty cruel. if you loved your cat properly would you really want to scare and frighten it like that? i don't think so. i dont' think people like you should own cats to be honest.
This is one of the greatest things I've ever seen! Good job!
LOL, that is the awesomest thing I have ever seen!
Great hackage … true geek cred, my man.
And the the douche up there who thinks you're being cruel … cracka please! I guess it's cruel to use the vacuum or a slap-chop around your cat too?
Nice Experiment..I love these sort of things.. 😮
Love it! Think it could be modified to keep my teen boy out of my fridge? 😀
i love cats so i felt a little sorry for your kitty, but dang, how many times did it take for it to learn? 🙂 i actually just bought a supersonic anti-barking thing to stop my cat from waking me up at 430am with his crying…is this too mean?
Buy a newspaper and smack him hard! That'll do and cost less!
I'd just put the cat in the blender.
This is hilarious and I trained my cat to stay the fuck off my keyboard by saying his name real loud followed by relocating him to the bed via the air.. after 30 times.. he caught on. Dumber cats might take longer. 😆
Poor cats….one of Gods little creatures that I freakin hate…..they are usless four legged wastes…put them in the blender…
@"ihate cats" Yeah and what did your stupid ass do to change the world today? You can't even spell "useless" correctly. Get a life, you retarded sociopath.
it's so funny !! I 'LL DO IT !
I'm from brazil, but i liked so much it !! 😆 😆
😆 😆 😆 😆 😎
😀 I love this idea!! PLEASE, PLEASE put this together as a product for the pet market, make a ton of moiney and save thousands and thousands of cats who would otherwise be beaten, drowned or thrown out but owners less clever than you!!
Why do people think this is cruel? Nature would be much meaner to the cat. Welcome to the real world : life's tough, learn faster, live easier. 🙂 Excellent work, you should make and patent a cheaper, less-blender-y version of this.
Uh, if you have so many shots of your cat jumping up there, how effective of a technique is it really…?
Good job ! I'm very happy to see .I've the same cat , Blac and white . Fom Brazil.Tks
You need some ping pong balls rolling down inclines and a mousetrap to win the Rube Goldberg award, however.
This is not cruel. Cats learn to associate the counter with noise and lights that are not enjoyable, and stay off. I am looking to do something similar because my cats are on the counter all the time…even when I'm standing right next to it. They get down when I tell them to, but they don't stay down. Maybe doing something like this would teach them once and for all.
muito bom,mas coitado do bichano!!
Cats are like kids folks they just do it anyway when your not looking. They are both smarter than we think!