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Web Exclusive: Cat app keeps lonely cats busy

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(CNN) - If you have trouble keeping your pet cat indoors, this app could be for you.  
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Australia has designed an interactive iPad Cat App.

It's the ideal playmate for lonely cats.  "Basically the aim of this game is for the cats to protect the cheese," says Amanda Appel, RSPCA.  It's a cat app for furry pals.  "So if we let a mouse go for too long they will start circling the cheese and take a nibble out of it".

There are three games in all.  They're designed to stimulate, entertain and they can show off.  
"They have a system here and you can see their high score at the bottom so this is for their human parents to be able to tell how smart they are," says Appel.

Unlike any other cat apps, it also has an automatic boredom shuffling system.  A world first feature says student designer Saxon Cameron. "This is a game I have designed you can put down so if you go out to work or to the shops; it'll repeatedly shuffle through games so the cat will remain interested". 

Simmy is just 8 weeks old, but she is obviously very clever.  It took her less than a minute to work out if she double taps the app it will go to the main menu.

"I was not expecting a cat to go around trying to figure out what the interface would work like. It might have been an accident I don't know," says Cameron.

Never mind it automatically defaults back to the game... Another ploy to keep felines indoors and not on the hunt.  "For us it is all about keeping indoor cats stimulated and excited because they have not got that natural environment to go hunting," says Appel.  Called the affection collection it was part of a University Charity Project, the download is for free.