Wolf, who doesn't own a cat, hasn't plumbed the oddities of feline behavior enough to be able to guarantee that his software will bring out the playful kitten in any cat. But he tried. During the design process, Wolf hired an animal behaviorist to gain insights. He learned that cats can recognize activity on a television screen or computer monitor, but most programming designed for humans doesn't titillate them. Cats fixate on an object's color and movement patterns rather than its shape, he said.
Diagonals are a big deal for cats.
Starts and stops. Random movement is the key. Wolf and his programmers paired cat-enticing characters with random movements and added lots of squeaky, chirpy sounds. After testing the game on 100 or so cats, Wolf claims CyberPounce has coaxed cats into uninterrupted play for as long as 10 minutes, a long time for a cat, whose typical playing bouts last for just a minute or two. Some felines don't respond at all.