As a follow up to my rather angry blog post of Monday, in which I rant about OkCupid's online matching system, I felt I should share this more light-hearted yet related tidbit:
I'm a huge animal lover, and I follow animal issues online and try to support them in my community, so I already knew that June is Adopt a Shelter Cat Month (as designated by the ASPCA). But I only learned about their Meet Your Match program today. Here is their description of what this program is all about:
You could be gazing at the animal of your dreams, but you just can’t tell what she’s thinking behind that furry face. What if you knew a little something about her personality and habits before you moved in together? The ASPCA’s Meet Your Match program wouldn’t let you go home without knowing who’s in that carrier or on that leash. MYM is the only method in existence today that evaluates an animal’s behavior and interests and matches them to an adopter’s preferences so that you take home a pet you can really click with.
This may seem silly on the one hand, but I feel it's a great idea - not only for the pet-owner, but also for the pet. This process could ensure that owners not only end up with pets suited to them, but pets end up with owners who are more likely to appreciate their personality and unique traits. Perhaps on some level this could help alleviate the issue of mean pet owners adopting innocent animals only to abuse them (though this would only really happen in a perfect world, ultimately). And another neat thing is that you don't need to stick with only your colour-coded match pets - it's simply a guideline.
Could this little beauty be your perfect match?
You never know! Anyway, I just thought it was lovely to see some positive matching practices going on out there for a change. If only they could develop a system like this for humans! Though if I can be totally honest, I'd take a cat over a man any day (in fact, I have one right now, and she's the best companion and roommate anyone could ask for!)
