Cats were made for the internet… you don’t need facts to explain it. Just ask anyone who has gotten lost in a vortex of cat videos that I watch. It was this morning, while on Twitter that I came upon a post by Hikari Hida and Mike Ives about a digital cat that has captured the hearts of thousands of people in Japan.
This 4k cat licks its paws, greets people in a mix of the words hello and meow in Japanese. The cat also does at it pleases, only showing up a few times an hour – in between normal advertisements.
The cat yawns here and there, and at 1 a.m. it drops off to sleep for about six hours, resting its head on white paws that hug the side of what appears to be an open-air perch near the Shinjuku subway station. (The three-dimensional look is an illusion created by a curved, 26-by-62-foot LED screen.)
New York Times article
There is no specific product that the cat is advertising. A spokesperson for one of the two companies funding this cat, said about why they did it was that, “There are many reasons we decided to display the cat, but one of the big reasons is that with corona, the world became very dark,” Mr. Ohkawa added, referring to the coronavirus pandemic. “Through the cat display, we wanted to revive Shinjuku and make it brighter.”
It is no mistake that I love cats, the fact that a little bit of happiness can be spread in such a dark time. The display doesn’t technically open until Monday; however, it has already made an impact.
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