Daniel Chauvin
Sooke News Mirror
A former Sooke resident has developed a helpful app for keeping track of your pets. Called ‘Petunia’, the helps keep your pets safe and their records close when it matters most.
Christopher Prince and his wife Natasha Vizcarra currently live in Louisville, Colorado. The couple has four cats which has been a big part of their inspiration for the application. She is a writer and and a graphic artist, and has led the visual design.
The couples’ company name is named after one of their cats, who first had the nickname Muffin, and then became “Spastic Muffin” because she ran around the house crazily. The name stuck for the company.
Christopher lived in Sooke for a time. He went to elementary school and completed high school at Edward Milne. He worked at Village Foods working as a bag boy. One of his employers lent him a Canon SLR (pre-digital) camera and got him started on his photography hobby.
He went on to study computer science at the University of Victoria, his MA in psychology from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Louisiana Lafayette. Unofficially, this Ph.D. was in cognitive science, and was split between psychology and computer science. Chris studied dolphins in Hawaii and chimpanzees and rats in Louisiana.
After a stint as a professor in computer science, he left the university and started his software company.
Spastic Muffin does software contracting on various projects and systems and also creates apps. The Petunia app focuses on pet medical history, but also records personality quirks, symptom tracking, dietary requirements and makes it easy to share that information with pet sitters and veterinarians.
The app is designed for the iPad and iPad-mini running IOS 6 or later. It is a free app and the in-app purchases allow for full-sharing of information as well as removes ads.
You can download the Petunia on the app store.
Go to: www.spasticmuffin.biz/