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Uber and Cheezburger will deliver you 15 minutes of kitten playtime for $20
- bayesianhorse 13y agoIt does look ok. Depending on the age of the kittens it would be nice to tag the mother along, but otherwise 15 minutes shouldn't harm anyone. This kind of business, when not tied to an ethically operated shelter, has a lot of abusive potential, of course.
- bfe 13y agoBTW I presume Uber implemented this in LOLCODE? HAI CAN HAZ UBERDEPLOY? VISIBLE "O HAI! WILL U HAZ UBERKITTY?" LOL VAR R USERSEZ IM IN YR LOOP GIMMEH USERSEZ IZ USERSEZ LIEK "KITTENS!"? YARLY VISIBLE "KITTYZ IN YR LAP!" UBERDEPLOY KTHX NOWAI VISIBLE "CAN U HAZ KITTYZ?" KTHX KTHX KTHXBYE
- deletes 13y agoI'm so going to learn this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- AnkhMorporkian 13y agoPlease don't, the LOLCODE market is competitive enough already.
- msane 13y agoThis is completely, absolutely brilliant.
- wehadfun 13y agoThis seems like something that would come out at the beginning of April
- madcaptenor 13y agoIn the SF financial district; I could not get a kitten.
- cupcake-unicorn 13y agoHas anyone done this yet? Or too early to get the kitty van? I see the "Kittens!" option in Uber but don't see the cat icon.
- andrewryno 13y agoWe just had the kittens at our office (they just left). They have 3 cars doing it, and we were only the second company to get that car. One of them really liked me (Artemis). :)
- lucidrains 13y ago"Sorry, all Kittens are currently being snuggled. Please try again soon!" :(
- rsfinn 13y agoAll right, that does it. If I see ONE MORE CAT on the Internet, I'm leaving. I mean it. Don't push me. Edit: Oh, they're adoptable? Well, all right then; I'm for that.
- jlees 13y agoThis is genius marketing. I've already seen a bunch of friends go nuts over the idea and I hope those kittens find great homes through the initiative!
- xamdam 13y agoRaise demand for young cats, surely it will not impact more young cats being produced (and killed when they get older). Want a pet? Get and keep one.
- pallandt 13y agoWhat the...? This is a reputable company offering the service, not some sketchy back-of-the-alley vendor. It could be a wonderful service for people that cannot keep pets in their rental apartments for instance, or people that live with someone allergic to cat fur preventing them from owning a cat, or plain and simple people with really busy lives that wished they could own a pet but know they'd be unable to care for it properly. Personally I've wanted countless times to keep a cat for the long-term, it simply wasn't possible because I knew I'd end up neglecting it, especially considering that kittens require so much attention. What's the harm in this? Instead of sitting in a shelter all day long, the animals are socialized well, they get to experience varied new environments and maybe even end up being adopted by the customer. Have you considered that this could also be great for old, retired and lonely persons, like someone's grandma that lives all by herself and barely gets any visitors?
- wiredfool 13y ago1 day, they're shelter cats, and the proceeds go to shelters.
- prezjordan 13y agoI know it's fun, but I honestly think they're testing the waters with this sort of thing - same goes with the "Call an Ice Cream Truck" campaign from this summer. Uber = On-Demand... anything?
- wiredfool 13y agoEels on wheels?
- this_user 13y agoUber has repeatedly done specials, e.g. delivering a mariachi band last year. I really don't think any of this is meant as a permanent product, but more as a PR strategy. And in this case they can also claim to do it for a good cause.
- mason55 13y ago> Uber = On-Demand... anything? Yes, Uber has said in their interviews (or maybe it was pg talking about them?) that once they have the infrastructure set up to deliver a car anywhere they can branch out into on demand delivery of anything.
- fudged71 13y agoIt was soon after that Google invested $200M+. I believe that Google's driverless cars have a bigger financial gain by delivering goods rather than people. We all think they're doing the automated taxi thing, but I think that's just to make the general public comfortable with driverless cars being on the roads.
- aetherson 13y agoIt's a dessert topping! It's a floor wax! It's both! Either a car is safe to drive on regular streets without human supervision or it isn't. It doesn't matter what's inside. You could probably imagine a scenario in which the cost of the self-driving kit (not the software, but things like "a LIDAR array") was something like $100,000. In which case maybe most private individuals are priced out of the market, but some corporations are like, "This is still cheaper than paying for drivers." But I don't really see why that wouldn't apply to taxis as well as kitten-delivery. And in any case, it's hard to imagine why the cost of an automation kit would not drop in time. So I don't think there are too many plausible scenarios in which it is persistently the case that automated cars only carry non-human cargo.
- blhack 13y agoNow do it with puppies!
- ISL 13y ago"National Dog Day" appears to be August 26. Of course, every day is a good dog day. Perhaps Uber will consider doing something like this quarterly.
- sjmulder 13y agoMy girlfriend is a big fan of both kittens and cupcakes. This would be perfect for her, too bad it’s not in Amsterdam. Over the summer Uber had some cool stuff here. You could hire a boat with friends, and the ice cream truck of course.
- PeterisP 13y agoThis does feel a bit weird - short-term rental of petting animals? I'm worried about mishandling, animal cruelty and the whole concept - pets form an attachment with you, doing it as a short-term rental isn't an acceptable way of building a relationship...
- hsod 13y agoMy college had the local shelter bring dogs to the library during finals week for stress relief. It was wonderful, and the lady from the shelter said the dogs loved it.
- wiredfool 13y agoThe bog standard way of getting animal adoptions is to take a bunch of kittens/puppies to a public place, and let people hold/play with them. And it works, because generally, puppies and kittens like socialization, and people are more likely to adopt an animal if they see one. Though, normally it's free, and the animals aren't delivered by a taxi service.
- blhack 13y agoI used to volunteer at an animal shelter: One of the big things they stressed, at least for the dogs, was how important it was to play with the them. Expose them to people, scratch their ears through the grate on their kennel, pay attention to them, etc. etc. The reasoning being that dogs who are used to humans, and are affectionate towards them, are more likely to get adopted. If this was for dogs, it would be a HUGE benefit to them. Getting them out around people is almost always a good thing for them.
- w0utert 13y agoCats are nothing like dogs though. While it's also important to socialize kittens as soon as possible to make them comfortable around humans, I don't think it's a good idea to haul them around town in a car. Cats don't like to be taken outside their known environment at all, and they don't like to be locked inside a box, or transported in a noisy car. Just to give some perspective, my own cat loves people, strange or familiar, it doesn't matter at all. Take her to the vet in a car though, and she will go mental, crap and pee in the cat carrier, meow and hiss when she gets let outside of it (never does that otherwise) and be extremely edgy for sometimes 2 days afterwards. I wouldn't go as far as saying this is 'cruel' to the kittens, and it's great that the proceedings are donated to an animal shelter, but I'm pretty sure the kittens will not enjoy it nearly as much as the people who get to cuddle with them.
- nutjob123 13y agoThis is kitten prostitution
- mcantelon 13y agoPretty much. I went to one of those places in Tokyo, years ago, where you pay to pet cats and it was a depressing place. There were cats who were into it, but there were cats who clearly didn't want to be there (and some who'd been confined to cages that looked like little human apartments and were pacing constantly inside them).
- chrismonsanto 13y agoI've been to a cat cafe in Tokyo, and I don't remember seeing any cats in cages. I do agree that it was a depressing place though, none of the cats were interested in interacting with the humans. The place still seemed popular. I don't know why. The one stray cat I found during my stay in Tokyo was much more friendly than any of the cats in the cafe.
- GuiA 13y ago> The place still seemed popular. I don't know why. Isn't it because Japanese people love animals, but with the sizes of apartments in Tokyo it's pretty much impossible to have one of your own?
- natural219 13y agohttp://www.puppycopter.com/ http://www.puppycopter.com/
- gucc1 13y agoWhat does this have to do with HN?
- elag 13y agoUber is the poster child of Bay area 'p2p capitalist' startups covered on HN and if anyone was in any doubt about there being a second bubble this effortlessly invites the pets.com comparison
- 650REDHAIR 13y agoFew things -It's a great PR gimmick for Uber/CheezBurger and it's something others can learn from. -Uber articles typically end up on HN because of their presence in SF and that a lot of HN users use Uber (all of the 50~ people that I personally know on HN have used Uber) or are otherwise connected to people who work at Uber. -Ben Huh is awesome. He's a great advisor and him being involved means I'm going to upvote it. -Kittens on demand = cool. -Kittens, cupcakes, and raising money for a good cause = Awesome.
- 3825 13y agoIt is not just a PR gimmick. Look at this line: >> No cash required! Donations will be charged directly to your Uber account. This is big as most everyone who signs up now has an account with Uber. Once Uber has my credit card information, I am less hesitant to use their service in the future. It sounds like a great way to reduce friction to me. Off-topic: I remember when the only reason I signed up for Living Social was because Amazon.com was giving me $10 in gift certificate. I thought they were idiots for giving me free money. Of course, I don't think twice about having a $90 gift card balance "because it never expires".
- jrockway 13y agoUber is a company from the San Francisco Bay Area, and HN is a site about companies from the San Francisco Bay Area.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- vinceguidry 13y agoThis seems incredibly underpriced. Make it $50 and target office parties, add another $50-100 for catered cupcakes and they'd make a ton of money for shelters.
- pmjordan 13y agoKittens at office parties seems cruel. Cats can't stand crowds of people and will try to hide, not want to play.
- vinceguidry 13y agoI think it's learned. No kitten I've ever met shied away from people.
- tehwalrus 13y agoThe internet is leaking again... Seriously, this is a great way to get some kittens adopted from shelters. I am in the UK, and very jealous.