/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I have a young cat who's adorable and wants to play for longer than I do. So that she doesn't get bored (and since I have a spare room), I'd like to build her pic related so she can play endlessly. It's just a device that swings around a fishing pole so that the cat can chase the lure all over; she already thoroughly enjoys this kind of play, and so this is a device to keep the fun going without me.

I have an old 5'x5' rug that I don't mind putting a hole through, and hiding the base under the rug should reduce the likelihood of stubbed toes. There are two main components:

1) The base and pole. I've built stuff out of wood before, but metal would be much sturdier and less bulky. I feel like such basic shapes should be easy to obtain; it's just two 5' beams (or 7' if placed diagonally under the rug) that connect in the middle to balance/support a beam that goes up a few feet and holds the Main Device.

2) The Main Device. It needs to be able to rotate 360 degrees freely (frequently and randomly changing direction/speed or stopping), and to swing the fishing rod upward now and then. I need to be able to program the parameters/randomness so that it swings the fishing rod the way I want it to, it needs to be able to run without a computer physically attached, and it needs to be tolerant of resistance when the cat manages to sink her teeth or claws into the lure. In other words, it needs to be gentle enough to not yank the lure from the cat hard enough to hurt her, and durable enough to not get damaged from the cat pinning down the lure. It should also be able to release the fishing rod so that I can use it to play with my cat by hand.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to get started with either component. I've never worked with metal, and while I am a programmer, I've never programmed anything that moves other than the Lego sets designed for that purpose. What would be good resources (or explicit instructions) for figuring this stuff out?