Great Projects using our Public APIs 

Here's a roundup of some great projects we've spotted out in the wild. Can't wait to see more!

Over the years we’ve had thousands of people from all over the world signup to use The Cat and Dog APIs, we’ve seen students using the APIs for school projects, developers creating apps for their portfolios, and recently we’ve had a number of people reach out letting us know they landed the job they were after, using our APIs to demonstrate their skills.  We LOVE seeing what people come up with, and thought it would be fun to curate some of our favorites in a post to share with all of you. Perhaps it will inspire some new ideas, and if there are any projects you think should be included on this list please submit them here and we’ll do a followup post highlighting them. 

  1. First off we have Friski, dubbed a Tindr for cats, it was created for rescues such as the ASPCA to use for their animal adoption efforts. In addition to being a noble service, it gives the users, as the creator mentions, a nice way to kill some time and bring stress levels down.  Check out Friski, perhaps it will inspire you to adopt your own furry companion.  
  2. Are you feeling down? Perhaps you just need a cat picture to turn your day around? That’s exactly what Andrew Healey created using TheCatAPI.  It all started when he saw a tweet stating something to the effect: 

“I’m okay submitting myself to The Algorithm as long as it knows when I’m sad and forwards cats directly to my face”

So that’s exactly what he did, Andrew created a program that could read his expressions and presented him with cat pictures in those moments when he looked a little down. 

There are many studies that back the effectiveness of viewing cat photos or videos, one such study published in Computers in Human Behavior suggests that watching cat videos can be used as a form of stress relief or digital pet therapy.  We love to see science backing up what we already knew to be true. 

  1. Where would we be without great WordPress plugins and this one using our API is a keeper – the Catnip WordPress plugin makes it possible to add random cat photos to your blog or website with incredible ease.  Go ahead, give it a shot! 
  2. Now available in the Google Play store, PawPics, a newly created Android App that gives you a clean, ad-free experience. It allows you to view cat pictures for days through a user-friendly feed. Download it today! 
  3. We all love a good meme, right? This next project, posted in 2017, shows you how to set up your very own Cat Meme Creator.  It combines our Cat API with random funny quotes from Ron Swanson and Chuck Norris or motivational lines from around the web.  
  1. Another project that we loved was the Print a Cat Button. The creator of the tool asks “Are you bored with your printer? Do you wish you had more pictures of cats? Are you ready to bring your printer into the 21st century?”  To that we say yes, yes we are!  Check out their post for step-by-step instructions on how to augment your printer to print cat pictures with a simple press of a button. 

We’re excited to see what other ideas you all come up with.  We also invite you to join our Discord community where we post announcements, discuss ideas, and others share projects they are working on.  Please join us!

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