Tailio Gives You The (Poop) Scoop On Your Cat’s Health

This may just be the coolest and most unexpected tech product for pets that we’ve ever seen, and it all revolves around your cat’s litter box. Yes, you read that right.

Tailio is a project that’s currently up for funding on Kickstarter and it’s so uniquely awesome that we just had to let our readers know about it.

The creators of Tailio are billing it as the world’s first in-home smart monitoring system, designed to help pet owners monitor their cat’s overall health, as well as early detection of potential health problems.

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Tailio is a flat, WiFi-enabled device that is placed underneath your cat’s litter box to monitor hallmark indicators of health like their weight, waste, litter box habits and how often they’re using the box. It’s connected to an app on your smartphone that seamlessly transits the data to your phone and the cloud in an easy-to-read format and sends you daily updates, no matter where you are.

It might sound a little wacky to monitor your cat’s bathroom habits, but think about it: pets can’t tell us when they’re not feeling well. Usually, our first indicator that something is wrong comes when they began eliminating abnormally or too often. And since cats use a litter box, their bathroom behaviour isn’t as apparent to us as when we’re walking the dog, so when you get down to it, Tailio is actually pretty brilliant.

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The device, developed in consultation with veterinarians, learns about each cat and generates a unique ‘Pawprint’–a profile of their health and physiology that it uses as a baseline to measure any changes. If you have more than one cat, it’s able to identify them separately and monitor them accordingly. Smart!

Tailio lets you know simple things, like when your cat’s litter box needs cleaning, as well as more advanced stuff, like if they’ve packed on a few too many pounds or are using the litter box more often than usual (a sign that kitty may need medical attention). You can even use the app to send a ‘scoop-the-litter-box’reminder to a family member or pet sitter!

The Tailio team has already surpassed their $30,000 fundraising goal (in fact, they’ve almost doubled it!) but you can still help out. There are different donation levels from $5, which gets a picture of your kitty on the Tailio website wall of fame, all the way up to $10,000, which gets you a trip to San Diego, dinner with the company founder, input on future designs and of course, you’ll be one of the first in the world to own a Tailio.

If you’d like to pre-order the device, you can pay the early bird price of $99 when Tailio ships out in April 2015.

To learn more about Tailio and get in on the pre-order action, check out their Kickstarter page. The campaign ends on December 12, 2014.