“Indoor/Outdoor” has arrived with the dispiriting opinion that our furry companions aren’t four-footed Machiavellis; they’re mostly as banal as their owners. Indeed, after explaining that a cat spends 90% of its life sitting in front of the television (surely not!), playwright Kenny Finkle seems intent on turning his talking cats into characters that would fit into one of Lifetime’s less original movies of the week.

At least Mr. Finkle doesn’t mind that Andrew Lloyd Webber got to the topic first. Sir Andrew, though, had T.S. Eliot’s “Book of Practical Cats” to work from, and his characters embodied all the tricky paradoxes of the feline mind. Cats are famously insane – they try to move all the water from their bowls onto the floor; they scratch their way through a door only to demand to be let back in; they tremble and make spooky yowling noises at dust motes on the wall. But in Mr. Finkle’s world, all those adorable eccentricities boil down to simple romantic comedy.

As in the most amateurish plots, every twist feels random and unearned – coincidence stands in for cause, mawkishness for effect. Clearly, though, an impressive weight of producers stands behind “Indoor/Outdoor,” perhaps anticipating a childlike adult hit like “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” David Korins creates another meticulous set design, making hills and a house out of bright-colored carpets. It’s a wonder audience members don’t rush up and try to sharpen their nails on it. And the cast-members all outperform their material. Brian Hutchison does a squeezeable everyman; Emily Cass McDonnell uses her odd, Betty Boop voice to great effect.

Wisely, instead of going the stretch-Lycra-and-whiskers route, Mr. Finkle and director Daniel Goldstein let the “cats” of the play wear people clothes. Samantha (Ms. McDonnell) bops around in jeans, narrating her life with human Shuman (Mr. Hutchison), likening the relationship to a dysfunctional marriage. When he brings her home from the pound, she sleeps the first night on his bed. “I know a lot of you will think that’s kind of fast,” she says, which – frankly – yuck. Soon, though, a prowling tomcat named Oscar (Mario Campanaro) arrives to tempt her with talk of outdoor life. Heavy-handed security versus freedom conversations ensue – will Samantha stay in a loving home, or escape to the wilds with her un-neutered beau?

Shuman, of course, demands his own romantic foil, which he receives in the cat therapist Matilda (Keira Naughton). Despite Ms. Naughton’s adorably scatty delivery, her storyline is bad, inorganic filler, plugging in gaps in an under conceived plot. For reasons that are never explained, Matilda can understand Samantha when she speaks, and the climactic scene involves her rapid-fire translations between Shuman and his kitty. But the more she helps Samantha to express herself, the more the gap between owner and cat widens. Here the play begins to hint at an interesting, chilling idea: Couples’ therapy and its insistence on “understanding” can be a terrible wedge between lovers.

Mr. Finkle skitters away from such weighty topics, however, and soon has Samantha cavorting under the stars with Oscar. Aside from the occasional curse word, the humor of such moments seems aimed at an awfully young audience. We’re meant to slap our thighs when Oscar gets excited about a beach – “I didn’t know where to take a dump, because it’s all sand!” Ha? No. Weed out the poo jokes and the dance breaks to Brit-pop, and Messrs. Finkle and Goldstein haven’t got much else to do. Sacrificing their initial attempts to draw parallels between suffocating marriages and pet ownership, Shuman figures out a way to make Samantha feel both loved and free (he installs a cat flap).This is happy ending by fiat. If only infidelity were so easy to solve.

Open run (103 E. 15th Street at Union Square East, 212-239-6200).