The Cat Scan

My wife loves cats. She spends a lot of time looking at cats that are up for adoption. A couple years ago she lucked out and found one she was super excited about at the Willamette Humane Society. We drove down to Salem and adopted him that weekend.

Potential names included: Oppenheimer, Water Bear, Judge Dredd. We compromised on Winston.

He was the best cat either of us had ever met. He was with us a little over two years before kidney disease killed him.

My wife was pretty upset. Plus, the timing was bad—he died a few days before her birthday.

So for her present I wrote her a Ruby script. It fetches web pages, reads through them, pulls chunks of information you want, checks that information against values you specify, and emails you any matches.

There are 3 new items for Oregon Humane Society:

Name: Baby
Breed: Snowshoe
Sex: Male
Color: Seal Bicolor
Age: 13 years and 3 months
Link: https://www.oregonhumane.org/adopt/details/14622

Name: Houdini
Breed: Siamese - Mix
Sex: Male
Color: Chocolate Point
Age: 9 years and 2 months
Link: https://www.oregonhumane.org/adopt/details/85339

Name: Prince
Breed: Snowshoe
Sex: Male
Color: Seal Bicolor
Age: 14 years and 2 months
Link: https://www.oregonhumane.org/adopt/details/201196

And when she’s ready to start looking for a new cat, I’ll cron this script and spare her some tedium.