BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the Grinch hated Christmas, click here.

Remote Fetch: Ball chasing is very good exercise for pooches, even if it can cause obsession and anti social tendencies that will result in thousands of dollars in dog therapy. Capable of being remote triggered at 7 or 15 second intervals, or just automatically throwing balls your dog drops in the bucket, it might be worth the trouble. Think of it as the equivalent of a video game for a dog. And it's better than a doggie treadmill, which you can't really leave a dog unsupervised on for very long. $120 [Remote Fetch]

Hotdoll:Ugh! Someone actually went and turned the hotdoll dog sex doll concept into an actual product. The doll has a silicon...nevermind. We had one at Gizmodo Gallery and one owner brought one in to see if their dog—that loves humping—would hump it. He did not. I guess just like real people, it takes a flexible sexual orientation to find comfort in inanimate figurines. Price TBD [Hotdoll on Giz]

Indiana Jones and Star Wars Dog Costumes: Remember when Indiana Jones shot that guy with the swords in Temple of Doom? What if, no, listen, wait, what if Harrison Ford was a dog and in that scene and, instead of shooting the assassin, he used teeth! And, like in Star Wars, instead of light sabers, they had swords made of bones. Oh man, hilarious! Earnestly, these costumes are the only items on this list you should legitimately buy for your dogs. Roughly $14 each. [SpoiledRottenDoggies]

Autofetch Motion Pet Ball: It looks like the famous Super Happy Fun Ball* from Saturday Night Live sketches in the 90s, and although not radioactive, the Autofetch ball acts freakishly similar. The motorized dog toy takes a cookie and then spins around, wildly, til batteries go out, or your dog goes insane and crushes the life out of it. Recommended! *Do not taunt! $27 for two. [Autofetch]

Bissell SpotBot Pet: Puppy training is basically like potty training a kid, except your whole apartment is the diaper. Here we have a steam cleaner that sprays cleaning solution to the mess on your carpet, a rotating brush that scrubs while the vacuuming action drinks—sorry, that may have not been the best choice of word—up the dirty water, storing it in a reservoir for disposal later. Basically, it's an automatic poop/vomit/pee cleaner. I'm surprised they don't make one for frat boys. $140 [Bissell]
Catgenie: Look, I know I said this whole list is a bunch of things you shouldn't buy, but this is the one you should especially not buy: CatGenie is basically an automatic literbox that takes 45 minute to cycle out the poop. Until humans engineer smarter pets that can be potty trained, there is no tech that can avoid domestic animal excrement handling. $329 [Catgenie review]

Sleepypod Air: This is a travel bag for little animals. What makes it different from other bags is that it has special deceptive fold-in panels that squash your animal while going through security checkpoints, so no one can tell you your bag is too big. (Don't worry, I don't think it'll kill your cat.) Then, after you board, it expands a few inches but fits under a chair. It also has a slot for slipping through a rolling luggage handle, so the bag can rest on top, and has seatbelt clips for placing it in car seats. $150 [Sleepypod Air]

The Hydroglass: For those who believe fish are pets, even though you can't hug them, I'd find it hard to believe you could do better than this fish tank, which has a seven-head horizontal shower on top. $14,500 [Hydroglass]

Don't forget to recommend your own favorite pet gifts in comments-include pics and pricing if possible.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favorite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We'll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

Sometimes the best apps are the simplest, and CatPaint is nothing if not simple. Cats can be added to preexisting photos or cat-scarce shots from the iPhone's camera, and either saved to your camera roll or sent via email. Using it takes a while to get used to: Once you've selected a cat from the app's animal palette and set the slider for size, each tap on the photo instantly splashes a new cat at the point of contact, which can't be edited, save for a temperamental shake-to-delete function. But seriously, not the point:

See?!? A dollar. [iTunes via Macworld]

The point of the Autofetch Motion Pet Ball is to stick some pet treats inside, activate the internal gyro-drive, and let the ball spin around to entertain and reward your pet. Well, at least I think you're supposed to use it for your pet, because one of the two "frequently asked questions" listed on the product page is a bit odd:

Can I use this motion ball with my pet Rabbit or Pig or Iguana?

Yes, it can be used with any pet, child, or adult human.

I really want to give whoever wrote that the benefit of the doubt and assume that the intent is to say that it's safe for kids to use the toy to play with their pets and that they're not encouraging shoving Halloween candy in there and watching a kid chase after the ball. Although maybe that could be fun to watch. [China Vision via Red Ferret via Wired]

The Dream Cat Venus is coming to Japan this month for $110. Both touch and sound sensitive, the Venus (no relation to the planet or the feminine razor) reacts to your petting and talking with a proper amount of nudging and purring. And like the Sony Aibo, the Dream Cat can actually "see" through its camera-enabled eyes.

But does this poor robot need to look like the product from a My First Taxidermy kit? Drop the realism for a moment, Sega, and let these helpless kittenbots out of your dungeon in the uncanny valley. Such amoral plush tactics may work fine to tease the buffets of Melmac, but no one wants to see Japan become Melmac...any more than it already has. [Sega Toys (pdf) via CrunchGear]

Despite connecting to your outdoor plumbing lines, the PowerLoo is not a backyard doggie toilet. The PowerLoo is a backyard crap flusher (read: you pick up dog crap then place it in the toilet). And while I'm sure it adds some level of convenience to doodie disposal, the $1000 price is on par with one of those fancy, Japanese toilets that literally air dries the cellulite from your butt. Coming this June. [PowerLoo via Treehugger via DVICE]

On one hand, kittens are organic lifeforms, presumably loyal to other organic lifeforms. On the other, kittens grow into cats. And for thousands of years, cats have refused to follow the human code.

What I postulate is a future in which there is a sort of war trifecta. It will be Man vs. Machine vs. Kittens. And with the feline world showing up as an insane wild card, anything can happen...though in the immortal words of John Connor, the outcome is most likely that, "We are dead!! We are all dead!! Because of kittens!!!" [Cute Overload]

Machines Behaving Deadly: A week exploring the sometimes difficult relationship between man and technology.

Ward is a photographer of pets for Fat Orange Cat Studios. The photos are ok. But she's got some good advice over there:

I also almost always shoot in burst mode, usually in slow burst at 2 to 3 frames per second.

I end up doing a lot of gymnastics during a shoot. I'm crouching, kneeling, on my back, on my side, waking up sore the next morning.

I sort of treat my still camera as a video camera. Even if I'm not actively shooting, and even if the subject is not doing something "capture-worthy," I continue tracking through the viewfinder and recomposing. Because soon enough they will do something capture-worthy, and I'll be ready to press the shutter the second it happens.

Treats, ham, roast beef, squeaky toys, patience. With dogs, I like making meowing sounds. Seems to get their attention every time, and as a bonus, they give the quizzical head tilt. It's a little trickier with cats because if you make an attention-making noise more than even once, they will ignore you thereafter.

Damn cats.

I am reminded, reading all of this, of how insane pet owners are, and how a the professional pet photographer is an unsung hero of portraiture. Their subjects are only somewhat less difficult than what Annie Leibovitz has to deal with when photographing rock and movie stars.

There is the greater question of why people don't just buy nice DSLRs and take photos of their own pets. But I suppose all the tricks and tips in here—far greater in number and substance than you'd assume a list could be for mere humans—are the answer. [NYT]

It's pretty cool, I guess. I mean, it's more convenient than having your phone get a text every time the cat goes in or out. Even easier, however, would be just not giving a shit whether or not your cat was going in or out and just focusing on your job instead of allowing yourself to be distracted by this crap.

If only the guy made Twitter a viable business plan. That would be impressive. Speaking of which, don't forget to follow us on Twitter—we want to be your friends![Switched via UberGizmo]

And so now, since it's my last day, I'm lightning reviewing the Tinge Razor.

The Pitch: It looks like and actually works as a razor (it even comes with cartridges), but when you put the cap on and press some set of buttons, it turns into a personal massager with 32 different speed and mode combinations.

The Price: $99 gets you the Tinge Razor, its charging base, universal power adapter, two shaving razor cartridges and a bottle of gel.

The Verdict: For some odd reason (hint, visa regulations of a certain country I reside in), I find myself traveling a lot, and lemmee tell ya - does it get stressful! So having a personal massager around that, incidentally, also functions as a shaver was actually more useful than I first thought.

The actual massage was pleasant, if not as strong as it could have been – though that could have been due to me not charging it long enough. I especially liked "mode four" of the five different modes you could choose from: it starts from a low roll and escalates in power.

Not having to worry about what the voltage of whatever country I'm in is was a big plus. The fact that I could pull it out anytime and get a massage discreetly was an even bigger plus. Though I'm not sure exactly what I need to be discreet about. Can't a girl loosen up some muscles without being judged? Geez.

What? It's for use on my... what?

Okay... if you say so. But I don't know, she didn't seem to enjoy it that much. [My Tinge]

Malcolm always seems to do it when I'm writing some important email or have a lot of windows open. And then he steps on it and everything goes BASDFASDGASDBASDGASd or BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP and all the keys go CLAAAAACCCCCCCCKKK as his nails scrape against the plastic. And then he wants to play and looks at me with a look on his face like, "LETS GO OUTSIDE BUT FIRST FEED ME AGAIN!"

Other writers here think its because geek owners stare at their screens all day, and the pets eventually need some attention, food, or a poo break. What do you think it is that makes pets want to walk on keyboards?

Aside from the 2-gigabytes of storage it packs, the tail doesn't really do much else, except look ridiculous. Also worth a read is the Akihabara News' write up of this thing, where Daimaou awkwardly rambles about chopped up cats or something.

GeekStuff4U is selling this for an overpriced 5300 Yen (~54 dollars). [Geek Stuff 4 U via Akihabara News via BBG]

I mean, what cat doesn't deserve all the best human toys—Rock Band controllers, Wiimotes, Gameboys, Rubik's Cubes and even cans of Slurm? It's as if one Etsy store has distilled everything good about life and reconstituted that substance as a collection of sub-$10 plush toys safe for pets.

These people deserve to be rich, famous and maybe even have a cat scratcher or two erected in their honor.

[Etsy via GeekSugar]

UPDATE: The AP is now reporting that unemployed cat bong guy "says he put cat in bong 3 times." [SF Gate]

Sadly, that's just what one Acea Schomaker of Omaha, Nebraska did. Cops responding to a domestic disturbance call found the 20-year-old asshole smoking weed out of a duct-taped plastic box with a garden hose running into it and the cat stuffed inside.

The cat was fine, luckily, if dazed. "She was on the front seat of the cop car, wrapped in a blanket, and never moved all the way to the humane society," said one of the cops. It presumably ate a shitton of cat food when it got there.

Schomaker was fined $400 and faces drug and misdemeanor animal cruelty charges, and the cat was removed from his custody. [Huffington Post]

For instance, no matter how hard I push "use litter tray," Wynona still prefers to use the linoleum floor just in front of the litter tray. Is this a calibration issue?

And when I aim the thing straight at Wade and press "Get Off—Shelf," he just looks at me. And that's the other problem: Even when I'm not pressing certain buttons such as "Remain Aloof" "Cat Nap" and "Eject Fur Ball," the cats seem to be performing those tasks anyway. It's as if they have minds of their own! Maybe there's a good reason you don't print a toll-free tech support number on the package.

Sincerely,

Wilson, Frustrated Cat Owner

[Amazon via Book of Joe and Apartment Therapy]