Any day now I expect my cats to pack up their kibble and decamp for the bright lights and bigger city of New York.

Aside from its obvious perks — an abundance of rats, an approximate distance of 1,500 miles from one particularly enthusiastic kitty-lovin' toddler — the Big Apple has the added advantage of being home to the Meow Mix House, the latest wacky promotion from the feline food that cats supposedly ask for by name.

Not familiar with the Meow Mix House, you say? Think of the best reality TV/Web hybrid ever — at least as envisioned by the crazy lady down the street who shares her house with two dozen strays and always smells like cat pee. The pitch meeting must have gone something like this: "It's like Big Brother meets The Apprentice, with a little bit of Real World thrown in ... but with cats!" Really, how could you not greenlight that?

In this case, 10 strangers are picked to live in a house and have their lives taped. To find out what happens when they stop being polite and start coughing up hairballs, viewers can visit the Meow Mix House Web site ( www.meowmixhouse.com) to check out live webcam feeds from now through June 23 or tune in to Animal Planet beginning June 16, when the station will broadcast during the 8 p.m. hour a weekly three-minute "episode" (read: extended cat-food commercial) culled from House footage.

During the run of the show, the 10 feline contestants will be subjected to a series of reward challenges, a la Survivor, though these competitions — toy-mice-catching contests, purr-offs and, my personal favorite, who can fall asleep the fastest — aren't quite as difficult as the obstacle-laden dust-ups in the Land of Probst. Then again, the rewards aren't quite as swell, either (think Meow Mix brand cat treats), although there have probably been plenty of protein-deprived Survivors who wouldn't have turned their noses up at a few handfuls of Tartar Control Crustacean Crunch.

Each day one resident will be evicted from the house; the eventual winner — or last cat standing, if you will — will be "hired" by Meow Mix to serve as feline vice president of research and development, a gig that presumably entails a lot of taste testing and swatting of crumpled wads of paper around the corporate headquarters.

As goofy as it sounds, there is a definite method to the madness. The program was conceived to promote Meow Mix, of course, but also to raise awareness of the plight of homeless animals. Each of the 10 cats chosen to participate was plucked from an animal shelter and, once ejected from the Meow Mix House, will be placed permanently with an adoptive family and given a one-year supply of cat food. (Hometown pick Sam, a 1-year-old orange-and-white shorthair, was chosen from Operation Kindness, a no-kill shelter in Carrollton. His official bio on the Meow Mix House Web site notes that "Sam, who meows with a drawl, was once employed as a dog tester, helping dogs transition to a new cat in their homes. He called it 'rustlin' doggies.' ")

Though my cats are already blessed with a roof over their heads and three squares a day, I can see why they might find life in Meow Mix House preferable. Thanks to sponsors such as Hartz, Fat Cat Inc. and Lucky Litter, the New York City crib is pimped out with an array of kitty bling that includes cushy beds, toys and scoop-free automatic litter boxes. The cats are accompanied on their trip by volunteers from their home shelters, providing a friendly, familiar face during the stress of travel, and veterinarians and American Humane Association representatives will be on call 24/7 to make sure the feline stars are treated well and kept in optimum health.

That has to sound like paradise to my oft-overlooked pets, a previously pampered duo who were smothered with lots of affection, high-grade catnip and enough tuna to keep the Starkist Corp. afloat ... until The Boy was born.

These days their stuffed mice and catnip-laden balls are buried at the bottom of my son's toy box, purloined by a toddler laboring under the not-altogether-mistaken belief that everything in the house belongs to him. (Hey, if he can appropriate my good watch, the sofa pillows and every wooden spoon in the kitchen, who am I to deny him the pleasures of a couple of fuzzy cat toys?)

All too often their litter box sits forgotten and neglected, hidden behind the laundry room door until its offensive smell wafts into the rest of the house or until it's time to wash a load of whites, whichever comes first. And unfortunately for them, the first friendly, familiar face they see each day is usually attached to chubby, 15-month-old hands that like to rake roughly through their fur and a broad, sticky little mouth that likes to cuddle in close before shrieking loudly in their ears.

Given their current realities, how could I blame them for wanting to try their luck at TV stardom and a shot at a new, child-free household with all the cans of Cluck-a-Doodle-Doo they could shake a remote-controlled bird at? Truth be told, if I could resign myself to a diet of processed poultry byproducts and the indignities of grooming myself in public, I just might consider a stint in the house myself, if only to experience the magic of a home with a self-cleaning toilet.

Every other week, Say-so brings random musings and commentary on popular culture to Break Room.
E-mail Kim Harwell