Konstant Kitten

The website KonstantKitten.com claims to offer a service that's like a Netflix for kittens. They'll ship you an adorable kitten. You get to enjoy it for three months, and then you return it and get a brand new kitten in the mail. This keeps repeating for as long as you want, allowing you to enjoy permanent kittens.

Of course, the company is completely fake. No one is running a kitten rental service through the mail.

There are a couple of reasons why we can be sure of this.

First, even though Konstant Kitten claims to be open for business, there's no way to sign up as a customer. When you click on the 'Order Now' button, you get a message that "our online payment system is temporarily down for maintenance." It's been down for as long as the site has existed.

Second, the site claims that the kittens are shipped in "ethical, recyclable shipping boxes," and that it's legal to ship kittens through the mail. They even link to a section of the USPS's website that appears to indicate that it's legal to ship animals such as cats. But they link to the wrong section. The relevant section of the Postal Service code is here, where it specifically states that live, warm-blooded animals such as cats or kittens are "nonmailable."

Third, over a year ago the creator of the site (or someone claiming to be the creator) admitted it was fake in a post on reddit's pranks subreddit.

However, even though Konstant Kitten may be a hoax, there actually are real kitten rental services, of a kind. Many animal shelters offer foster parent programs, which allow people to serve as temporary parents to kittens, socializing them and taking care of them until they're old enough to be permanently adopted. So if you volunteer for a program like this, you could have an endless parade of kittens in your home. But of course, the kittens would never be shipped to you in the mail.

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