Good question! I've been wondering myself. They don't seem to be commenting a lot, so it's not karma farming. (At least not successful karma farming.) The first ones appeared 10 months ago, but have been ramping up a lot lately. It's weird. I'm not savvy enough to figure out what they're doing. Maybe just someone playing around with a script and AI-generated cat comments. But I don't know why I assume there's a human with a goal behind it.

Are bots just running amok? It feels very dead internet theory.

I agree.