Last week I read that a woman in Kamloops is advocating that city adopt a bylaw that puts a limit on the length of time a person can tether a dog in her or his yard.

I thought that was a good idea, seeing as bylaw enforcement is often complaint-driven, and tethered dogs can also be the source of nuisance barking.

Then there’s the woman’s reasoning for lobbying for such a fine against pet owners. Her argument is that dogs are pack animals and social creatures, so having them tied up in a yard alone all day is not exactly good for a dog’s well-being.

This line of thinking brought me back to a recent episode of The Nature of Things on CBC.

If you want your pet to be a loner, best to get a cat.

These tiny lion reincarnates often have a fierce independent streak and an aloof reputation to match.

By nature, cats are solitary hunters, and that’s a trait that hasn’t been bred out of generations of domestic cats.

A lot of cat owners might let their pets out at night and find them at the door waiting patiently to be invited in at the same time each morning, only to be left with that nagging question: Where does my cat go?

Over 16 months, researchers with the Journal of Wildlife followed 18 pet cats and 24 feral cats’ movements with GPS tracking to find out exactly that.

They found most house cats patrolled a small area of a few lots in the areas they lived in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

However, the feral cats they placed trackers on went further and wider than the house cats, entering several different types of landscapes in the process. That also meant they encountered a greater variety of risks, including traffic and predators.

The researchers also found the pet cats sit or lie down about 80 per cent of the time, whereas the wild ones were inactive about 60 per cent of the time.

All a curious cat owner needs to do to find data for his or her own pet is a strap a little GPS unit to the kitty via a harness, and the ability to download and interpret the map of where the cat goes on a computer.

Cat Tracker is a website designed specifically to map this GPS data.

The site is the brainchild of U.S.-based urban ecology researchers Your Wild Life and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, two organizations that didn’t put their heads together just to satisfy a person’s curiosity.

Researchers also say it could help increase understanding of cats’ predatory nature and the impact they have on their environments.

For example, the data on where cats go could bolster conservation efforts for native bird populations and other prey animals.

It could also help owners understand the risks associated with certain urban and rural environments that a pet may visit.

At its most basic, a pet tracker can also provide a bit of peace of mind for owners who might worry about the dangers facing their free-roaming cats.

To many people, tracking a pet with GPS probably sounds silly.

But to those people, I say it’s not just cat people who go a little coo-coo for their pets and the gadgetry designed specifically for people of their ilk.

For fish lovers, the FishBit is a product currently in kickstarter development stage that monitors the salinity, pH and temperature of your fish tank’s water all from the convenience of your smartphone.

It’s also got a controller for other aquarium features, including pumps and lighting.

When it’s on the market, the idea is it will show you everything you need to provide a healthy habitat for your fishy friends.

There’s a whole slew of products designed for dogs and marketed to dog lovers, including iFetch, which has successfully launched in the market after a completed crowd-funding campaign.

This automatic ball launcher will play fetch with your dog when you’re not around so as to provide it with that stimulation.

It’s like a mini tennis ball cannon that shoots the ball out of one end and has a funnel the dog can drop it in at the other end so the pet can play fetch over and over again.

There’s also the Paw Plunger, which will clean your canine’s feet after a romp through a muddy field so it doesn’t leave paw prints all over your clean floors.

It’s a mug-shaped doohickey that you fill with warm water and then plunge your dog’s paws in, one at a time, and gentle bristles clean the mud, gravel and road salt off your pet’s sensitive paw pads.

The Paw Plunger comes in three different sizes for all the makes and models of man’s best friend.

In our pet-obsessed world, there’s always something new to be learned or manufactured to provide the latest and greatest in pet provisions.