Gadget Guru’s magic box

Not a night goes by where GaGu doesn’t curse his cats. One in particular (the raggedy ginger one which looks like it’s been dragged through a hedge, in case you’ve somehow intercepted GaGu’s surveillance network) has begun singing a very distinct song when he’s brought in a mouse for a little play. This is a positive, because it at least offers Guru some warning, but since Mrs Guru flat refuses to wake up when the fluffy rogue is up to his antics, that warning is not overly appreciated.

Gagu has had some ideas, many of which cannot be printed in this magazine and probably shouldn’t be said out loud. And he’s tried some humane things. The £150 Pawbo Life, a Wi-fi camera which dishes out treats and has an automated laser-wiggler, was roundly ignored, as was the far cheaper £26 Frolicat laser. He’s tried setting off his Neato Botvac D6 (£650), which puts felines in a trance in the day time. At night, it merely wakes the junior members of the household and gets Guru in trouble – the nuisance cat could not care less. He is busy.

Short of removing the little tyke’s programming from the £80 SureFlap microchip cat flap (this would, undoubtedly, lead to GaGu being woken up as the idiot feline smacks his thick skull against the unyielding door), Guru is out of ideas. But they do say that true change comes from within; hopefully Alpine’s £11 SleepSoft earplugs, properly ensconced in your beleaguered gadget uncle’s ear canals, will block out the cacophony of the mouse song (“Mawwwwwwwsse”, it goes) long enough that Guru can get 40 winks in before having the carcass of an overly played-with mouse dropped straight on his face. Hopefully.

Over to you on this one, readers. Do you have any technological solutions to keeping fuzzy nocturnal annoyances at bay? Let GaGu know at the usual address.