There is: logical decoding http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/logicaldecoding.ht... I wonder why the author chose to waste time on this instead of doing things the proper way.
I would love to see a pull request for the "proper way." Thank you for your help.
That said, thanks for pointing this out - it looks like yet another very useful PG feature!
edit: thanks for the link to logical decoding, looks very useful.