Gadgetory

Caroline Paul and Wendy MacNaughton are self-described crazy cat ladies although Wendy only became feline friendly after a long ordeal it began four years ago when Paul's cat tibi vanished he thought he was dead right after five long weeks tibi healthy and well-fed returned his homecoming was cause for celebration but then Paul wanted to know where he'd been I did what betrayed wives do yeah everywhere when they want to find out what their man is doing I decided that I was gonna stalk him Paul and McNaughton Chronicle how they track tibi in their book lost cat they found a GPS device online called the cat track well we put a very small GPS logger on his neck which meant that we would shoo him out the door for the day because we knew he was still going to wherever he had been once he returned because he wasn't eating here this map shows Tibby's tracks over a 10 hour period well I expected to see like a straight line that went from my house to the perps and instead when I downloaded it I got this crazy Jackson Pollock like drawing on a map unable to make sense of Tibby's frenzied tracks Paul turned to the experts and contacted the GPS lab at Stanford they told me to to look for the timestamps like where he was for the longest time but unfortunately that that superseded that over I did my technological abilities the couple upgraded to the cat cam a still camera in a waterproof case though the resulting whisker shots didn't reveal much we also did get photos though of him outdoors and sometimes his own reflection in the window he seemed to like to look at himself they switched to a video camera but the footage made them seasick so they went back to the Jackson Pollock like maps and we created layers of each of the maps and stacked them on top of each other in a single document and reduced transparency which then allowed us to see all the maps at once by using Photoshop Wendy and Caroline were able to figure out that Tibby was spending a lot of time not too far from home about ten houses down the street since Tibby's cat capers the gadgets have advanced pot rack alerts you when your kitty goes beyond a certain area the tagged pet tracker displays your cats coordinates on your phone but Tibby may go down in history as a pioneer in tabby tracking technology he stopped wandering amuse already thirteen years old and so and then years passed and he actually passed away at the healthy age of seventeen Paul's current cats tend not to wander but she has a plan if they do she bought a drone in San Francisco I'm Sumi das cnet.com for CBS News