Japanese Startup Develops 'CatsMe!' App for Cat Pain Detection

TapTechNews on June 13, according to a report by Reuters today, a Japanese startup, Carelogy, together with Nihon University, jointly developed an App named 'CatsMe!'. By training to recognize 6,000 pictures of cats, it has more than 230,000 users since its release last year.

This App can judge when a cat is in pain, thereby reducing the number of times users have to guess when to take the cat to the veterinary hospital and the stress they endure. The developers said that the accuracy of this application exceeds 95%, and as the AI recognizes more cat faces, its accuracy is expected to further improve.

According to Professor Kazuya Edamura of Nihon University, veterinarians can judge to a certain extent whether an animal is in a painful state, but for the owner, it is a difficult task.

'Our statistics show that more than 70% of elderly cats have arthritis or other conditions, but only 2% of elderly cats actually go to the hospital,' Edamura said. 'So rather than a final diagnosis, we prefer to use this application as a tool to help the owner understand whether the situation is normal.'

TapTechNews learned that the report mentioned the story of a 57-year-old woman, Kitakata, who has raised many pet cats over the years and currently has a 14-year-old 'enior' cat named 'Chi'. In order to extend Chi's life as long as possible, she became an early user of this AI-driven pet-raising App in March this year.

Currently, with the help of this App, Kitakata monitors Chi's toilet situation every day, and uses it to interpret Chi's expressions.