For Christmas this year, my girlfriend and I made a talking toy cat for her nephew. It was a fun opportunity to build something together and practice some fabrication skills that are useful for calculator projects.
The idea for this project came from her nephew pretending to be a cat and calling himself "Kitty Salon." The toy version of Kitty Salon has five recorded messages saying things like "Meow! Meow!" and "Rise and shine!" A button on the bottom plays one of the messages every time it's pressed, cycling through all five. Two LEDs for eyes glow to show that the cat is on and fade on and off while the cat is talking.
Body
The first step to building the cat was sculpting a model out of clay. The innermost part of the model is a small box made out of foamcore which is large enough to hold all the electronics. The first try at making the cat out of clay from the craft store failed. The box the clay came in said that it dries when exposed to water. In our case, the model cracked in several places after drying and the feet fell off. The second try used Sculpey which doesn't require water to set and has the added benefit of working well with silicone rubber molds. You can see in the picture above that the back end of the cat is a little square and fat since the Sculpey is molded around the box for the electronics.
