Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of ... alcoholic fur?
Oh my gosh, you guys. This is sort of crazy, yes, but also sort of brilliant.
If you are a cat owner who enjoys indulging in a glass or five of wine when it's time to unwind, then you are about to have your mind blown, because somebody out there is trying extremely hard to to combine the act of hanging out with your favorite feline with drinking booze.
Grub Street reports that there is a new start-up called Apollo Peak, which has sold $500,000 worth of catnip-infused colored water (called "cat wine") at hundreds of stores in the past year.
What is catnip-infused colored water, you wonder? Why, only the equivalent of wine for your kitty cat. Instead of actually putting wine in products designed for cat-consumption (which would be a terrible, dangerous, cruel idea, and probably illegal too) the catnip-infused water is actually just filtered water that has been mixed with things like salmon oil, organic beet juice and of course -- a healthy dose of catnip.
We know, we know; it doesn't sound appetizing for a human palate, but boy oh boy does it make kittens go wild -- or it would, in theory, if cats liked the taste of the wine.
Bummer, y'all. They don't.
Basically, human beings think the idea is great; that's why $500,000 worth of the cat wine has been purchased. Unfortunately, however, the novelty clearly is for human owners. Cats just don't seem to actually like the taste!
Grub Street shares that Carol Pogash, a New York Times writer, put together a little catnip-water kitty tasting, and found that in fact kittens were more or less unimpressed with the brew.
"Needing to know which brand finicky cats preferred, I asked Ann Dunn, the founder of Cat Town Cafe, to let me conduct a feline focus group involving six fully awake cats and a dozen who were more interested in naps than liquid refreshments," writes Pogash.
"There was a surprise: Only one cat, a black-and-white one named Dickie, seriously liked the beverage. He sipped, then groomed himself and got blissful. Other cats lounging in cubbyholes ignored the offerings, though one was briefly interested.
"Nevertheless, the cat lovers -- even after seeing that the animals did not like the wines -- were smitten with the products."
Oh, well.