Whilst I am on blogging “sick leave”, I have invited anyone who fancies it to write a guest blog post. If you’re interested in contributing a self-build, green or cat-related post, please email me! Meantime, many thanks to Jonathan Hopkins for this contribution.

Cats and the web go hand in hand. Dogs don’t get that much of a look in really when it comes to the internet do they? Is this because geeks are more likely to have cats and have therefore helped inflate their online credentials? Or because cats just genuinely do a whole load more interesting stuff that makes it onto the web? Not sure, but I definitely fall into the ‘geeks with cats’ category and as such have invested a considerable amount of time in trying to geek out my cat. And, as the first of a what might turn into a few guest posts on Kits and Mortar, I’m going to look at cats and GPS.

One of the most worrying things as a cat owner is dealing with the fact that for a huge percentage of time you don’t actually know where your beloved pet is. You don’t know what they’re doing, who they’re hanging put with and exactly how far they are straying from home every day or night. Well right now, we’re right on the edge of being able to buy a commercial off-the-shelf product that will enable you to do all of this and more using GPS.

Gone are the days of having to buy something super expensive and rather intrusive looking from a website that looks, well, questionable. Pawtrack, so I was told after a few email exchanges, will be available later this month. It’s one of the first proper cat GPS tracking systems I found and have kept my eye on ever since.

There’s already plenty of GPS trackers available for dogs, (and even mobile phones) but when it comes to cats and GPS it all comes down to size. Dogs can lug around a bigger transmitter device attached to their colars, but cats need something a lot smaller. And that’s what’s held up products like the Pawtrack. And even now, looking at the picture of Freddie sporting his Pawtrack, it still looks pretty hefty for a nimble cat.

In the meantime while companies like Pawtrack (and others yet to come to market I imagine) have been developing commercial products, as you’d expect, tech savvy cat lovers have improvised, with some really impressive results. It all started with Mr Lee, whose owner built himself a GPS and camera device that fitted into a neat(ish) package that wing around his neck - giving his owner an amazing insight into what Mr Lee had been up to everyday - from hiding out with mates under cars to meeting blue snakes in the forest.

Fast forward a couple of years to now and the Mr Lee site has been developed a whole lot further - with DIY or ready-built kits available for purchase, but still very much in the ‘Make’ category of feline GPS. Still though, you can get one of the GPS modules in the UK (complete with PC software, no Mac - Boo!) for just £35. You can check out someone who’s done just that in the UK and shared the results. Quite impressive really for the cost, you just need to add a harness and hope your cat doesn’t just end up doing combat style crawling when wearing it.

Thanks to Alex_Lee2001!

My personal vision for the future of geeks with cats? A cat flap that enables entry based on RFID and alerts the owner via email/mobile/Twitter etc on entry/exit, complete with a photo of the cat going in or out and a time stamp. A super-small version of the Pawtrack GPS hardware keeps a live log of the cat’s position via GPS and this then hooks up to some sort of Nike + type community for cats which plots out all routes and stats online and via mobile apps. Oh and did I mention the fact that the cat flap automatically scans the cat for weight and other health statistics, which is then live-linked to the vet’s system and cat food manufacturers custom production file tailored to the cat ready for customised monthly food production and delivery?

It’s just a shame that cat+ is already registered and appears to be a type of accounting software rather than a next generation cat community.

– Jonathan Hopkins is a creative & digital consultant that blogs at middledigit.net about brands, technology, cats and other things he stumbles upon whilst perusing the interwebz.