The world's laziest cat gets a job: waking Sweden's forgotten phones

Stockholm, Sweden · 16 September 2026 · For immediate release

Barnluren is giving away a genuine vintage Garfield phone, the world's laziest cat as a working telephone. The point is not nostalgia. It is to get Swedes to open their storage rooms.

In many Swedish homes a working landline phone sits in a wardrobe, a basement or a drawer, doing nothing. Barnluren takes them in, checks and cleans them, and lets them ring again in the home of a child who does not have a mobile phone. Now there is a reason to actually go and fetch that phone: a prize draw for what may be the cutest phone in the world.

Entry is free and open until 13 October at barnluren.com/kretsloppet/tavling. The prize is a genuine vintage Garfield phone in working order, plus a Barnluren subscription for life, so the cat can ring for a child instead of sitting in the attic.

How the loop works

Anyone with an old landline phone fills in a short form at barnluren.com/kretsloppet and gets a PostNord QR code straight away. The service point prints the label, and shipping is free.

At Barnluren the phone is tested and cleaned. Then it is put up for adoption, where a new family is waiting.

When the child outgrows the phone, you can send it in again, so that it rings on in the next family. A phone never leaves the loop.

About the draw

• Period: 15 September to 13 October 2026
• Prize: a genuine vintage Garfield phone, used and in working order, worth about SEK 1,500, plus a free Barnluren subscription for one household for as long as the service operates
• Entry: free, no purchase necessary, one entry per person, 18 or older and resident in Sweden
• Extra chances: sharing your personal link gives one extra chance per friend who enters, up to five
• Draw: at random within seven days after the draw closes
• Terms: barnluren.com/kretsloppet/tavling/villkor

What Barnluren is

Barnluren is a landline phone for the home, connected over Wi-Fi to a closed network. The child only calls contacts the parents have approved: friends who also have a Barnluren, handset to handset, and family who answer in a free app. No screen, no open internet, no connection to the ordinary phone network. The handset can be an analogue phone the family already owns, or one that has been round the loop.

The first thing a child does with a phone of their own is call a friend. That is why Barnluren now builds telephone clubs: classes, teams and neighbourhoods where several families get one at the same time, so the children end up in each other's phone books and call each other without a mobile.

Calls are never recorded, and the only information stored about the child is a first name. The service runs on Barnluren's own infrastructure in the EU, with no advertising and no sale of data. Barnluren is a closed network and cannot call external numbers, including the emergency number 112.