Cathouse

Cathouse is a small charity web app I built to support the Tierheim Starnberg "new cat house" fundraising campaign. The shelter needs to build a new cat house because the current facilities no longer meet long-term operational needs.

The core idea of the app is simple: creating a virtual cat in the app as a visible contribution should motivate people to donate through official shelter channels. This turns abstract fundraising progress into a shared, playful visual story.

My goal was to create a motivating interface that increases participation. I designed and implemented the project end-to-end, including UX concept, frontend, backend/API, data model, and deployment.

For the cat animations, I built on a starter kit and extended it with additional coat variations and animation states to create a more diverse, lively cat population.

For implementation, I chose a full-stack TypeScript setup to keep data contracts consistent across the project. SvelteKit was a good fit for a lightweight UI, while NestJS provided a clear backend structure. PostgreSQL with Prisma offered a reliable relational model, plus predictable migrations.

The app collected more than 1,000 EUR to contribute to the estimated total project cost of 1,135,000 EUR. Around 30 virtual cats roam the screen as playful, memorable symbols of participation.