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Cat got your seat? Fold-flat chair foils felines

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By Casey Baseel, RocketNews24

Cute as they can be, cats don’t really understand some of the finer points of reciprocating the courtesies their human housemates extend to them. For example, we’re willing to bet that no matter how much you love your pet, you probably don’t lay your head down in its cat bed for a nap when it’s not snoozing there or bypass a trip to the bathroom to just relieve yourself in its litterbox.

Cats, on the other hand, have no qualms about stealing your seat as soon as you get up, basking in the residual warmth from your hindquarters and leaving you with no place to sit when you come back to your desk to finish the project you were working on, or email you were writing.

Here with a solution to this turf war is Japanese interior goods brand Bauhutte, which is now selling a reconfigurable chair that foils your kitty’s attempts to hop on when you’re not occupying it.

Bauhutte is an offshoot of Be-s, the quirkily inventive company that produced the combination rolling suitcase/desk that caught the eyes of mobile businesspeople and cosplayers alike. This cat-resistant chair, called Norenya Isu, is just as clever.

The name squeezes together the Japanese words "norenai" (can’t hop on), "nya" (the onomatopoeia of a cat meowing), and "isu" (chair), and Bauhutte made sure to pack it with as many cat countermeasures as it did puns. The most dramatic, shown below, is that you can fold the backrest forward, putting a lid on the enticingly warm seat cushion that’s beckoning your kitty like cat statues in Japan beckon customers.

Once folded down, the leftover gap between the seatback and cushion should be too narrow for your cat to jump into. Bauhutte also employs a couple of tricks to discourage your pet from just hanging out on top of the whole thing, by making the outer edge of the backrest stiffly angular and not at all comfortable to perch atop. For maximum protection, folding the back flat should also allow you to slide the entire chair under your desk.

And while there may be times when you want your feline friend in arm’s reach, if he’s getting in the way by parking himself on the armrests, you can fold those vertically and make him find somewhere else to chill for a while.

Norenya Isu is available in three different colors: black, blue, and red.

Bauhutte lists the chair at 21,600 yen on its website, but it’s currently available from Amazon Japan for prices between 13,922 and 19,500 yen.

Source: Bauhutte

Read more stories from RocketNews24. -- Cheerful, cherubic cat chillin’ on a chair -- Feline furniture: 21 ideas that make Japanese cat lovers purr -- Cat Robo: The automated cat toilet that frees you from ever having to sift through kitty litter

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Goodbye Kitty.

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solution in search of a problem....

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Another brainless invention. If any fool wants to shell out 20,000 yen then I guess that's their perogative. Why not introduce the cat electrification chair while we're at it? This marvelous device emits electric shocks when your cat touches it. My point? If you've decided to have a cat as a pet, then expect it to want to share its everyday existence with you. Cats will be cats. Be thankful for any affection it shows you.

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