Free · Android · No account

Catch every meow.
Learn what she means.

Your cat invented her language for you. Meow Catch listens, catches every call, and helps you work out what each one means — while helping build the first real map of cat speech.

Meow Catch: a ginger cat mid-meow with sound waves

The honest part, first

Because you should know exactly what this is before you install it.

Cats barely meow at each other. Adult cats went almost silent with their own kind — meowing is something they invented for us, and each cat largely works out her own vocabulary with her own person.

So there is no universal cat dictionary to hand you, and anyone selling you one is guessing. What there is: real, shared patterns in urgency and distress and contentment, and a private language between you and her that only the two of you know.

Meow Catch learns both. The shared part comes from everyone. The private part comes from you — and it stays yours.

How it works

Turn it on and put the phone down. It does the rest.

  1. It learns your room first. Every kitchen and every phone mic is a different instrument. Meow Catch measures your room's noise so a quiet meow next to a running dishwasher still counts.
  2. It listens, even with the screen off. Cats don't wait until you're holding the phone. A notification stays up the entire time it's listening, so you always know.
  3. It catches the meow — and holds the last 30 seconds. Missed one? Tap "I heard that" and it reaches back and grabs it. You never lose a meow for being three seconds slow.
  4. You tell it what she meant. Two taps for the quick ones, or write as much as you want: where she was, what was happening, the sounds you actually hear. Mark the ones you're certain about.
  5. Every cat teaches the next one. The certain ones carry the weight. The rest still help find the shapes nobody has named yet.

What you get on day one

Long before any of the clever stuff exists.

A record of her talking

Every meow, catalogued by day and time, with how long it was and how high. A diary of your cat you didn't know you could keep.

The shape of every call

See the pitch rise and fall. Rising is usually a demand. Flat is usually hello. Falling is usually a complaint. You'll start recognising them.

Her own vocabulary

Your tags are yours. Over time you're not guessing — you're reading a list of the things she actually says, in the words you gave them.

It works offline

Everything is caught, stored and readable on your phone. No account, no signup, nothing required to use it.

Where this is going

We would rather tell you the plan than pretend we're already finished.

Phase one · now

You're teaching it

Right now Meow Catch is a catcher and a catalogue. You catch meows and tag the ones you know. There's a try-it-now button so you can see the matching working on your own cat — but the real model doesn't exist yet, and we're not going to pretend it does.

Phase two · when it's real

It starts answering

Once enough cats have been caught and enough people have marked what they're certain about, translation unlocks — automatically, in the app you already have. Not "89% match to a hungry meow." Our honest read of what your cat is telling you, built from every cat before her.

What leaves your phone

An app that listens in your home owes you a straight answer on this.

The meow. That's it.

When a cat is detected, that clip goes up — a second or two of cat. The continuous audio of your room is never uploaded, and never stored beyond the rolling buffer.

Your notes, if you write them

What you tagged travels with the clip, because that's the part that teaches it. If you don't tag it, nothing about you goes with it.

No account, no identity

There's nothing to sign up for. We don't want your email and we didn't build anywhere to put it.

You keep everything

Uploading is a copy, never a move. Every clip stays on your phone as a normal audio file you can play, share or delete.

Get it

Android, free, no strings. Install from the file — your phone will ask you to allow it, because it isn't from the Play Store.

Needs Android 6 or newer and a microphone. Works best left running while you're home — the more of her ordinary day it hears, the better your catalogue gets.