PetQR
A stray cat walked into my house. 24 hours later, I had a product and a business. Yes, this is the best name I could come up with. I'm not great with names.
// the-why
Her name is Gigi. She's a stray cat who walked into our house one day, looked around, and decided this was her house now. We didn't get a say.
We tried to find her owner. No tag. Not microchipped. And even if she were — who actually owns a microchip scanner? Veterinarians. That's it. The rest of us are just standing in the street holding a cat, hoping.
The current state-of-the-art solution for lost pets is a metal bone with a phone number scratched into it. You find a cat, you call the number, you play 20 questions. "Is your cat orange?" "Does she have a spot on her ear?" It's 2026. We have self-driving cars. We can do better than this.
My parents have a laser engraving machine. My head started racing. That same night, I fired it up.
// the-build
From "huh, that's a problem" to working product: about 24 hours. Laser-engraved a QR code, gave it a unique ID, spun up a web platform, and strapped the first prototype onto Gigi — who was not thrilled but cooperated because she's a professional.
The flow is stupid simple, which is the whole point:
📱 First Scan → Register Your Pet
You get the tag, you scan it, you fill out your pet's profile. Name, breed, medical records, food preferences, neutering status — everything a stranger or a vet would need to know. Do it once, done forever.
🔍 Every Scan After → Instant Info
Someone finds your cat. They scan the tag. Boom — owner contact info, medical history, dietary needs, the works. No phone call, no guessing games, no "what does your cat look like?" interrogation.
💬 Anonymous GPS Chat
The finder shares their GPS coordinates over an anonymous chat — WhatsApp, Telegram, or in-app. They send screenshots, you get a live location. Nobody exchanges personal info. Everyone stays comfortable.
🏥 Vet-Ready
A doctor can scan it and pull the full medical history on the spot. No paperwork shuffle. No calling the owner at 11 PM. The tag IS the medical record.
The business model is simpler than the tech: one-time payment. You're paying for a laser-engraved tag plus shipping. No subscriptions, no monthly Bluetooth fees that barely work anyway. Cheaper than every GPS tracker on the market, and it never runs out of battery — because it doesn't have one.
// how-it-works
We threw up a website, did some marketing, and sales started coming in. Pet owners get a dashboard to manage all their pets and records. Every tag links to a unique profile. Simple, functional, and it solves a real problem that pet owners deal with every day.
And Gigi? She wears the first PetQR tag ever made. The cat who walked into our house uninvited and accidentally started a business. She decided to stay, and in doing so, she solved a problem I didn't know I had.
// whats-next
QR identification doesn't have to stop at pets. Children. Adults with memory issues. Anyone who might need to be identified quickly with context. The same scan-and-know pattern works everywhere.
On the AI side: imagine scanning a stray and getting back "87% match with a lost tabby reported 2 miles away." Connecting to lost pet databases, image recognition, pattern matching across a network. That's the vision.
The hardware dream: combine the QR tag with a tiny Bluetooth or GPS tracker. The QR handles the information layer, the tracker handles the location layer. Best of both worlds for the price of neither.
But even without any of that — even as it exists right now — it already beats a phone number scratched onto a metal bone. And it all started with a cat who refused to leave.