Although not totally new, a recent preference for contactless service during the pandemic has seen some restaurants in Japan experiment with the implementation of robot staff. This isn't a total replacement of human waiters, but rather the use of food-delivery robots, such as a gliding robot waiter that brings customers their ramen straight from the kitchen. One yakiniku restaurant even got creative and assigned their food-delivery robots Vtuber personalities to add a bit a bit of extra flavor to the system.

Much to the delight of customers, popular Japanese family restaurant Gusto has done the same with robots that have cat-like ears and fitted them tablet screens that display the responsive facial expressions of a cat. The robots even speak with some kitty slang, adding "meow" to the end of some of their set phrases.

Things don't always run so smoothly for the kitty robots, however, as Twitter user kchap (@1kecha1) noted by sharing an episode they observed at Gusto that's been catching many online by pleasant surprise. On a recent trip to the restaurant, kchap noticed that two of the cat robots crossed paths...and then adorably argued as they tried to get by one another!

"The other day I went to a family restaurant that had two cat food delivery robots, and when they ran into each other in a narrow aisle said 'Move out of the way meow!' and 'I wanna get by meow!' to each other and it was so cute. A staff member came and shut off one robot and moved it to solve the issue."

While the cat server robots at Gusto have been a bit of a hot topic for a while, many who had never seen one in person were shocked and delighted to hear they could interact in such a way. Others chimed in saying they had seen the same kind of standoff occur with two robots trying to pass one another, testifying to the cuteness of the whole situation.

They were just as amused as when Kchap showed a video of a cat robot sleeping on the job...

...explaining that the same two robots got in a similar argument just five minutes later...

...and of course their adorable voices!