One of my cats recently caught some kind of bug, which meant a vet visit, blood tests, and about $135 poorer. After all that, it turned out to be a normal fever. Good news for the cat. Slightly humiliating news for the me who spent the next few hours wondering whether a gadget could’ve helped me panic more efficiently. That’s the problem with pet tech . It sounds ridiculous until life gives you one weird symptom, one missed meal, or one unusually quiet afternoon. There are feeders that portion meals from an app, collars that track escape artists, cameras that let owners spy on naps, and water fountains that monitor drinking habits because apparently even the bowl needed analytics. At CES 2026 , a PETKIT fountain was showcased as having a camera and AI tracking for individual drinking behavior, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes the category sound fake and unavoidable at the same time. My first instinct is to hate all of this.…