Tweeting cat door alerts the media
By Phyllis DeGioia
April 9, 2009
This spring, birds aren’t the only critters tweeting. Two lucky cats named Gus and Penny, whose owner clearly has way too much available time, are using Twitter to alert the media of their daily activities. Forget the Wizard hiding behind his curtain: These cats can open a door merely by standing in front of it. What power! What grandiose plans for fame and fortune!
The Tweeting Cat Door is a hilariously ingenious do-it-yourself contraption. I’m not sure if the cat-adoring owner is a geek, but I’m thinking that would explain a lot. The door is RFID-enabled, which is the same type of radio frequency identification technology used to track animals in the wild. Thankfully, Gus and Penny don’t have plastic things stapled to their ears and thus never look like deer caught in the headlights. Unique tags hang from their collars. When Gus ambles over to the door, his tag signals the door to open. It must feel like Moses parting the Red Sea without opposable thumbs.
When either cat goes out or comes back in, a camera takes a photo and uploads it to Twitter with preprogrammed comments. Gus and Penny’s Twitter feed looks something like this:
Gus is in to smoke a catnip cigar.
Penny is in to poop.
Gus is in to vomit in owners shoes.
Penny is out to buy catnip from the dealer.
Gus is out to annoy the dog next door.
Penny is in to annoy Gus.
My cat wants a bit of this fame and fortune, but sadly for Dickens, the Tweeting Cat Door is not available for sale. At least not until the inventor realizes what a market there is for this thing!
I saw those radio pet doors in a catalogue a few years ago - might have been Neiman Marcus but I’m not sure. They weren’t that expensive, I think around $130 or so.
So, that part is available, the rest you can cobble together :>)
Comment by Selma — April 9, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
Call me a very sad person, but I can see a practical use for the tweeting aspect. It would be very handy to know when your cat last checked in to avoid those embarrassing times when you wake half the neighbourhood calling kitty home when kitty is virtuously asleep under the bed.
Comment by Rosemary — April 9, 2009 @ 4:09 pm
I think it would be simpler to buy one..
http://www.petdoors.com/electronic_pet_doors.htm
Comment by EmilyS — April 9, 2009 @ 6:17 pm
Ah - looking at it again, it’s not exactly what I thought as it depends on the cats wearing collars. The RFID doors I know about work by reading the cat’s micro-chip - so no collar needed. It ought to be fairly easy for someone who’s electronics-minded to add the refinement of reading the chip and recording which cats entered or exited with a timestamp; in principle it would be no different from card systems that record who’s in a building.
http://rspca-cambridge.blogspo.....r-cat.html
Comment by Rosemary — April 10, 2009 @ 3:09 am
Rosemary, that sounds great.
However, I wonder if the chip that is used in the United States would work on the English electronic cat door.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — April 10, 2009 @ 5:00 am
Wow another enterprising pet! Betsy and Norman use NormBet BRS (Bark Recognition Software)to run their dog toy store!
http://www.seopressreleases.co.....paper/2845
Comment by BestFriends Mom — December 21, 2009 @ 11:09 am