They look like creatures from a gruesome sci-fi movie. But these shocking new images show the creepy ringworms and tapeworms that could be living inside your cat or dog. These parasites are mostly microscopic, but their gory detail is revealed in the images, which have been magnified up to 180 times. They show the importance of taking your pet to the vet regularly to get it wormed, a relatively simple treatment usually involving tablets. On rare occasions, both tapeworms and roundworms can infect humans too – the latter known to potentially cause serious damage to children's eyesight.

My relationship with my cat is less that of pet and owner than it is hostage-taker and hostage. Four-year-old Vlada spends every night sleeping peacefully in my arms like a teddy bear. Then, too soon after dawn, her demeanor abruptly changes: She bites my hands, legs, and neck, and meows in my face with a force that can only be described as belligerent. "Stop shouting at me," I tell her. After I have dutifully dispensed her morning tin of Applaws, Vlada is appeased.

Now that I'm dealing with three cats, an 11-month old's diapers and potty time with my four-year old, I just needed some relief from mountains of excrement. Enter the Litter Robot 4, the latest iteration of Whisker's automated litter box (a product we initially covered in 2005!). It's a small, spaceship-looking device that automatically rotates after your cat does its business, separating waste into a storage bin and leaving the remaining clean litter behind. Instead of scooping a box daily (or several times a day for multi-cat households), you only need to yank out the Litter Robot's bin bag and replace it with a new liner once a week. Sounds like a dream, right?

Nestlé Purina Petcare is launching the Petivity Smart Litterbox System, consisting of a smartphone app and litterbox monitor that captures and transforms behavioral data into actionable insights that help owners proactively care for their cat. The smart monitor helps owners provide a new standard of care for their cats by using artificial intelligence to learn each cat's unique litterbox patterns and identify subtle but meaningful changes in weight, frequency, waste type and elimination schedule. "The Petivity Smart Litterbox System allows cat owners to get personalized insights to their cat's litterbox usage," said Dr. Avi Shaprut, DVM, Purina veterinarian. "While the device is not intended to diagnose, treat, mitigate or cure any conditions, it can help detect changes that can be early signs of health conditions like diabetes, kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, urinary tract infections and obesity, allowing cat owners to proactively seek out veterinary care earlier and unlock better outcomes." Using artificial intelligence developed by a team of Purina pet and data experts, the Petivity Smart Litterbox System detects meaningful changes that indicate health conditions that may require a veterinarian's attention or diagnosis.

Think you have a good pulse on how your cat is feeling? Tably is a new AI-powered app that can help confirm whether your suspicions are correct. Simply use your smartphone camera to take a picture of your feline friend and the app will use machine learning to decode its mood. Sylvester.AI, the company behind the app, writes that Tably is based on the Feline Grimace Scale, a proven tool used by scientists to determine pain in animals based on facial expressions. A scientist can score expressions both in real-time or from photographs based on the presence or prominence of things like whisker changes, ear positions, and more.

It's too bad, because "3D World" is considered one of the finest Mario games ever released. Polygon listed it as the 5th best game in Mario's oeuvre. It was a sequel to "Super Mario 3D Land," the Nintendo 3DS title that brought an isometric camera angle to the series. This helped the level designers focus on building more traditional platformer levels like the older games, rather than the open-world jaunts of "Super Mario 64" and "Super Mario Sunshine." Thus, "3D World" was home to some of the tightest and creative level designs in the Mario series.

Here's an easy way to improve your fur-riendship with your cat. A team of psychologists has found a way to communicate positive emotions with cats using eye movement. The researchers from the Portsmouth and Sussex universities in the U.K. found that narrowing eyes at a cat in a movement they described as a "slow blink," followed by a prolonged eye narrowing or closure is like smiling for cats. The results of their two experiments with slow blinking at cats were published in the journal Scientific Reports this week. Their study found that pet cats were more likely to slow blink back at their owners if the owners slow blinked at them first, and they were even more likely to approach a researcher they'd just met if the person slow blinked before offering an open hand than if the researcher kept a neutral facial expression.