Human Ingenuity vs. the Cat

262

Mar 25, 2026

For me, engineering isn’t just about writing code at work. It’s a way of thinking that I apply in everyday life, even in small things like figuring out how to stop my cat from spilling his water bowl.

Tsuki (the cat) has a complicated relationship with water. He waits patiently for me to fill his bowl with fresh water, but as soon as it touches the floor, he pushes it, spilling water everywhere.

I tried putting a rubber mat under the bowl to stop him from sliding it on the tiles, but he's strong enough to move it anyway.

So I decided to come up with a solution that finally solves this problem.

Idea

I came up with several ideas, but chose this one because it was the simplest, and in this case, the simplest is the best.

For my design process, I usually use two things:

Paper and pen for sketching
Fusion 360 for 3D model

Details

The magnets are positioned on both sides to ensure a secure lock.

During the second iteration, I realized that the magnets were so strong that neither my cat nor I could open it. To fix this, I added finger grips to the front side.

Because the inner shape of the lock matches the shape of the bowl’s base, the bowl can’t be removed just by pulling it straight up.

I attached the back side of the lock to the floor using 0.6–0.8 mm Scotch Mount Multipurpose Gel Tape and adjusted the height of the front side so both of them would remain level.

Test

Installation and removal are both very easy.

Update

The glue holding the magnets in the previous version eventually failed, so I decided to change how they’re inserted. Fortunately, the magnets are strong enough to maintain a solid connection even when separated by four layers of filament (two from each side).