According to a piece done by Kill Screen last week, developers like Martine Carlsen are beginning to develop apps specifically designed for cats. That’s right, cats.

Carlsen decided to try her hand at developing apps designated for cats after her own cats were “disinterested” with the cat gaming apps available on the app store at the time. The first cat gaming app she released featured a tiny virtual mouse moving across the screen while making “real mousey sounds.” It was called “Catch The Mouse.”

Carlsen’s website now features an abundance of cat gaming apps, including a gaming suite app that includes fly, goldfish, butterfly and spider “Catch” games in addition to the original “Catch The Mouse.” There are even paw painting and cat music apps, if you can believe it.

“The design of the game has to appeal to humans to ‘persuade’ them to purchase it, and it has to appeal to the cat to be a success,” Carlsen noted in her interview with Kill Screen. “One without the other is not enough.”

And, like humans, cats have preferences about which games they supposedly like. “Some cats will gladly attack everything that moves on the iPad screen, while others are more picky about even the most lifelike (virtual) mouse,” she explained. “I try to make games with catch objects that appeal to as many cats as possible, but you can’t please everybody (or every cat). It’s like buying an expensive toy for your kid; they take out the toy and play with the box instead. You never know!”In addition, according to Kill Screen, “the touch screen on a tablet is just as sensitive to the pads on their feet as it is to human fingertips.” So while cat gaming is only in beta, don’t expect it to go away anytime soon.

Source: Adweek