This is a current commercial for Friskies cat food. My husband and I saw it while watching a television show on Hulu and were both so baffled by it that we had to pause the show and go find the ad on YouTube and watch it again to see if we’d imagined how bizarre it was. We hadn’t.
Now that I’ve seen this ad a few times, I realize that it’s actually even stranger than I realized on that first viewing. I have no idea what the people at Friskies were thinking when they made this ad because this seriously seems to tell viewers that Friskies pet food is laced with LSD or some similar hallucinatory drug. If I had a cat who ate Friskies, I’d switch brands immediately.
The thing is, I’m pretty sure Friskies isn’t laced with LSD (or even with Cat Nip). It may not be the very best cat food out there, but I don’t think it’s the equivalent of feeding your cat street drugs either.
Still, the commercial shows one seriously messed up cat trip. It may look all cute, but think about this for a minute. What’s wrong with that cat? It’s in a happy fun world filled with it’s favorite food that are all just begging to be stalked and killed – frolicking cat-sized turkeys, ambling cat-size veal on four legs, dancing fish and chickens practically laying themselves out at the cat’s feet. But what does the cat do? I would have expected it to chase and probably eat the animals (they’re food, right?). That’s not what it does. It lazily strolls among them, almost like they’re it’s friends. It’s eerie. Cats don’t do that with prey. That’s not a cat who realizes it’s in kitty paradise – it’s a cat who’s so strung out that it no longer realizes there are tasty meals dancing around it just begging to be pounced on. That is not a healthy cat.
Friskies may have been trying to show a happy, wonderful human version of a happy cat, but anyone who actually has a cat will tell you that a real cat wouldn’t be happy like that. A real cat would go crazy in such a fantasy world where they couldn’t chase the prey that’s everywhere. And that’s why I have to stick with my original thought that I’d switch brands to something other than Friskies after seeing this, because Friskies clearly doesn’t know cats.
Besides, on the off chance the food is laced with LSD, I’d rather be safe than sorry.
an Ad a Day 