The tag is set with several pre-recorded tweets that are triggered by the dog's activities. So if he's running around, you might get a tweet that says "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and...OOUUUCHH!"

If Sparky is napping, he'll tweet "Somedays it feels like my paw is permanently on the snooze button!" If he's making a ruckus, his tweet will let you know that as well, saying "YAHOOOOOOO! Somedays you just gotta get your bark on."

"Puppy Tweets capitalizes on two popular trends - the use of social media and real time communication, as well as peoples' extreme love for their dogs," said Susan Russo, Mattel's director of marketing.

The 250-strong Pets at Home chain, which had been headed for a stock market float, was sold today in a deal worth £955m. Details of the deal are being kept private, but the senior executives behind the out-of-town petshops will soon be able to buy some real diamonds: four top bosses at the Cheshire-based business, together with founder Anthony Preston, are likely to bank £220m from the deal.

Preston, a former petfood wholesaler, founded Pets at Home in 1991. Eight years later it took over its larger rival Petsmart, setting out a mission to become "the B&Q of pet care", and has been opening new stores at a rate of 20 a year ever since. It now employs 4,200 staff and is led by 38-year-old chief executive Matt Davies, a former banker.

Products aimed at helping owners train their cats have sold well in recent years: CitiKitty Inc. sold 7,000 kits of its training system in 2009, compared with 2,100 its first year in 2005. Norman, Okla.-based Evolve Products LLC sold about 2,000 CatSeats this year, compared with 500 six years earlier, when it first hit the market. Canadian entrepreneur Aston Lau says sales of his "Toilet Trained Cat" book and CD have doubled each quarter since he released them a year ago, though he declined to divulge the number of units sold.

The methods vary, but the process goes something like this: Every few days or weeks (depending on the cat), start moving the litter box from wherever it is to the bathroom until your pet finds itself next to the toilet. Once the cat is accustomed to the box's new location, begin the process of elevating the litter box—again, every few days or even weeks—until it is level to the toilet seat. (At our household, we built a tower of pizza boxes, affixed to the floor with duct tape.) Once the cat is jumping up comfortably to get into his litter box, you must find a way to transition the litter into the toilet—and then (this is the hardest part) gradually get the cat acclimated to the water in the toilet instead of the litter he's more used to.

"I think what the economy has really shown this year, is that people really view pets as part of their family," said Jessica Whit, spokesperson for Petsmart, a nationwide pet retail chain. "We have holiday toys and treats and for the past few weekends we've had Santa here to take pictures. It's $9.95 for a photo and collectable frame. $5 of it goes to Petsmart charities."

In Houston, Texas, PETCO Assistant Manager Lucy Herrera said more of the holiday toys have been selling than the regular toys.

"There is definitely an increase in people buying stuff for their pets even with everything going on -- it hasn't slowed," she said. "They're still going to make sure that their pets are taken care of above all else."

The 13-year-old cat tested positive for the H1N1 virus at the Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center at Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, the state health department said. The cat, which has recovered, is believed to have contracted it from people in the house where it lives.

"Two of the three members of the family that owns the pet had suffered from influenza-like illness before the cat became ill," Dr. Ann Garvey, the state's public health veterinarian, said. "This is not completely unexpected, as other strains of influenza have been found in cats in the past."