"People always say, 'Oh, can you have my dog do my online banking?' " Ms. Grossman says. In reality, dogs don't "necessarily do very useful things on the iPad," she adds. "But I don't necessarily do very useful things on the iPad either."
Ms. Grossman is part of a nascent but growing group touting the use of apps for pets. They say the apps can entertain pets stranded alone at home, teach valuable motor skills and even promote social behavior by engaging loner animals.
Some smell a rat. They say it isn't fair to make a cat endlessly chase a critter that can't be caught. "Without a successful capture," says Pam Johnson-Bennett, an expert on cat behavior, "I believe the play session keeps the cat too revved up instead of allowing for a satisfying winding down of the action."
Brooklyn cat owner David Snetman intended to let his cat, Pickle, play with his iPad until he tired of it. An hour later, Pickle was still whacking at the screen. Although Pickle's interest never flagged, Mr. Snetman hasn't let him play again since. "It seems very frustrating for him," Mr. Snetman says.
App developers dismiss such criticisms as, well, catty. People "have negative connotations of a zombie child staring at a TV for hours and hours," says T.J. Fuller, who helped develop the popular "Game for Cats." "But I think it's quite different for cats," he says, adding that the games challenge cats physically and mentally.
He and business partner Nate Murray developed it after an app they designed for children flopped. They now have three cat iPad apps, including one that allows cats to paint on a screen and "Game for Cats," which encourages cats to swat a laser dot, mouse or moth scurrying across the screen. Mr. Murray says the apps have been downloaded more than one million times. The basic version of the original is free; others sell for $1.99.
"I started off really early on thinking that it was ridiculous, but it ended up being something really meaningful for people," Mr. Murray says, noting that some people have printed and displayed pictures painted by their cats and given them as gifts.
There are at least a dozen pet-specific apps available in the iTunes store. Although cats and dogs are the main targets, the games have been played by penguins, tigers and frogs, developers say. Penguins especially "seem to really love" "Game for Cats," Mr. Fuller says, but "I don't think the market is very big."
More than a dozen Magellanic penguins periodically play the game at the Aquarium of the Pacific, in Long Beach, Calif., says Dudley Wigdahl, curator of mammals and birds. During their first gaming session in February, he was astonished to see penguins pecking vigorously at the screen, trying to catch the mouse. "They got a lot out of it," he says. "I didn't expect that."
But success has brought its challenges: copycats, Messrs. Fuller and Murray say. Shortly after their game was released, the cat food company Friskies released its own series of cat-oriented apps. "There is a rivalry there," says Mr. Fuller, adding that he believes his newest game, "Catzilla"—which enables cats to wreck an animated urban landscape—is too edgy for the food company to follow.
Friskies says it developed its games independently and never claimed to be first. "We don't really know how they create their games, but we think they look pretty different," spokeswoman Julie Catron says.
The company's biggest success is an app called "Cat Fishing," which she says has been downloaded more than 500,000 times. The sequel, "Cat Fishing 2," emits meows if the app senses the cat is losing interest and enables owners to share results through social media. The games are free.
Friskies has released seven iPad games, using a focus group of six cats. Several were dubbed "gamer cats" after becoming "completely obsessed" with the games, says designer Eric Sutherland. Gary, an 11-year-old tabby, can spend entire days alternating between 15-minute bursts of game-playing and napping.
Another Friskies app, "You vs. Cat," pits competitors in "the first dual species game," Mr. Sutherland says. Humans at one end of the iPad attempt to score a goal by flicking a ball forward on the screen, while cats try to deflect shots from the other side. The Friskies website shows cats winning as of Aug. 11, with 28.2 million points to 19.7 million. "Humans are just getting pummeled," he says.
Some applications are more serious. A shelter in Los Angeles has begun using iPads with its cats as a therapeutic tool. "It pulls cats out that are a little shy," says Madeline Bernstein, president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles.
She advises pet owners, though, that such techniques can backfire: Her own cats now assume the iPad exists for them. "They're constantly getting in my way," when it is her turn to use the device. Still, using iPads provided the shelter with a fundraising opportunity. Officials printed cat paintings from the app onto notecards. So far, they have sold 600 packets, priced at $5.99, crediting the drawings to Frida Katlo and Jackson Pawlick.
Dogs require a different approach, says Ben Kamens, who designed "Game for Dogs" with a partner, Jason Rosoff. They simplified the background and created a starker contrast between virtual animals and the screen.
They experimented on Mr. Rosoff's Yorkshire terrier, Phoebe. "It's at the point now where when she sees the iPad she'll start freaking out," Mr. Kamens says. "She must think there are animals in it."
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