Getting a house cat to exercise can be quite a challenge, but a Korean company claims that it’s smart exercise machine can keep felines in tip-top shape even when their owners are away. There’s just one catch – it costs $1,800.

Korean startup Pet Ding unveiled its smart treadmill for cats earlier this month, at CES Las Vegas. The Little Cat relies on LED lights to motivate cats to exercise, allows owners to check on the cat’s activity when they’re away and record encouragement voice messages for their pet, and a companion app lets users set fitness goals for their purring felines. The smart exercise machine features an auto mode that promises to “provide the ideal workout program for your cat, and manage workout patterns,” but also lets users who want to get more involved in their cat’s workout control the speed of the treadmill.

Photo: The Little Cat/Instagram

The Little Cat treadmill isn’t the only exercise machine for pets, but it’s the first one to use LED lights to encourage felines to work out.

“Inside The Little Cat, there is an LED lamp that follows the movement of the wheel,” a promotional video for the treadmill explains. “The cat instinctively follows the light onto The Little Cat.”

Photo: The Little Cat/Instagram

As to how long the cat stays on the treadmill, well, that depends on how determined it is to catch that LED light moving along the center of the treadmill track. Pet Ding claims that for most cats, 10 seconds of exercise on the treadmill should be enough, while fatter felines will need to put in a few minutes of work. Luckily, the smart gadget automatically calculates the cat’s body-mass index and can customize the speed and duration of the workout based on its needs.

Personally, I find it ironic that a treadmill for cats is shaped like an over-sized hamster wheel.

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The Little Cat smart treadmill bill hit the market later this year, at a price of around $1,800.