In Japan, over 30,000 cats are slaughtered a year. There is a system to become a foster owner of an abandoned cat as a means to save it from being culled, but in Japan, pets are majorly bought from stores and interest in adopting cats from shelters is low. This is why we realized an idea to provide an opportunity to casually meet sheltered cats and cultivate more interest in adopting them.

We developed a matchmaking app "Catpling" that allows you to meet cats that share a similar look to you. Taking advantage of the phenomenon of people tending to like people who look similar to themselves, this mobile app finds cats that look most similar to you from among its registered sheltered cats.

By using the idea of “finding a cat that looks just like you” as an entertaining hook and then revealing the cats to be sheltered cats, the app generates interest in users who aren’t initially interested in adopting cats. Additionally, similarities can also be analyzed between cats. This meets the demands of cat owners who want to find a second cat they’d like to own.

Cats are unprecedentedly popular in Japan. On the other hand, there is not much talk about the culling of abandoned cats. The lovability of cats is easily accepted in Japan, but they tend to look away from serious animal problems. We took advantage of such characteristics of Japanese people and developed a platform to get them to learn about the problem of abandoned cats by piquing their curiosity in finding a cat that looks like them. Just by taking a photo, the mobile app quickly displays the results and, as sharing the result is just as easy, it also meets the desire to share cute pictures.

In developing this app, we collected and analyzed images of 16,000 cats. As a result, we succeeded in converting human faces into their cat versions. Then, by calculating the approximate value of the cat-ified image and the image of the registered sheltered cat, the most compatible (look-a-like) cat is found. By using this “human-to-cat" face converting mechanism, we succeeded in measuring the compatibility between cats as well as humans. This mechanism is made possible by using the latest deep learning technology, an advancement that’s only just become available in the recent years.

As ”Catpling" allowed them to share an image of their look-a-like cat, users of the app eagerly uploaded their match. The images were spread throughout multiple social platforms.

As a result from the recognition of this app, 62.5% of people answered that “they’d like to adopt a cat from a shelter rather buying one from a pet shop", and 72.5% answered that “they now have a better understanding of cats in need", 55% answered that “they want to adopt a cat in need”.

Additionally, the cat shelter organization (NPO) who provided information of their cats to this app are expecting cat protection activities to spread due to this app.