Thomas builds a stray-finder app over a weekend

01 — Blurry cats, no address

Forty times a week someone photographed a stray cat and sent it to Thomas — a blur of fur, no street, no time, sometimes no city. “Where?” he would write back. Half never answered. He showed the latest blur to the office cat, who had been a blur herself once. “I can’t rescue that,” he told her. She agreed by sleeping.

02 — A weekend and one big button

So he spent a weekend with an AI app builder and his own stubbornness. One big button: I see a stray. Press it and the phone adds the place and the time by itself, and the photo arrives with an address attached. The office cat tested it by walking on the keyboard, which the app survived. That, Thomas decided, was the first real test.

03 — The honest line

The app guesses a little — probably a tomcat, maybe hurt, maybe not a stray at all — and under every guess Thomas wrote one line that cannot be removed: estimate only, the vet decides. He has seen people trust a screen more than an animal. He was not going to build a thing that let them.

04 — Monday

On Monday at 7:40 the first report came in: a photo, a street, a time, and one line someone had typed — under the blue car. Thomas was there by eight with a carrier and a tin of something. She was under the blue car. She came out for the tin. The app said she was probably a stray. The vet, later, decided.