It’s gonna be the future soon, and I can’t wait!
It was only a matter of time before someone leveraged machine learning and algorithmic AI to parse cat vocalizations, and thanks to Javier Sanchez, translating your cat’s meows — and trills, huffs and chirps — is now a reality.
Sanchez was a member of Amazon’s machine learning team contributing to the development of Alexa, the now-ubiquitous virtual assistant operated by voice commands.
“I got to see how the sausage was made, how they train their models and work with all the data science platforms,” Sanchez said. “So I was fresh off the heels of that and I was thinking, ‘Well, we could do something similar with cats and it could be an app.’”
Sanchez’s new employers at the tech firm Akvelon saw promise in the idea and gave him the green light.
The resulting app, MeowTalk, is now available on iOS and Android.
There are two layers to the concept: The first one involves nine or 10 “intents” common to all or most cats. They include vocalizations for “Feed me,” “Hey human!”, “Let me out,” and “Pay attention to me,” among others.
Sanchez didn’t guess or intuit the meanings — they’re based on research by a team at the University of Milan, who built a data set of cat vocalizations by attaching tiny microphones to cats and recording everything the fluffsters say. Each feline utterance was analyzed and catalogued by frequency, rhythmic quality and context, among other traits.
The second layer is where it starts to get really interesting: By using MeowTalk like Shazam, the app will start recording your cat’s particular trills, chirps and meows and — with your help — eventually piece together what they mean.
As with dictation software and machine learning in general, the more data the app gets, the better its translations become.
This is important because, while cats share many sounds, each cat develops its own unique vocalizations:
With MeowTalk, you can create a profile for your cat and start using its auto-recognition to translate your cat’s meows and start mapping its language. While some translations are built-in and inherent to the app, translations specific to your cat require you to train the app to recognize your cat’s specific vocabulary and intentions. Translations you deem to be incorrect can be corrected via the app. MeowTalk is not static; instead it learns and evolves with each translation that you confirm, adding to its corpus, just as we would add new words into our own memory banks or language processing programs.
At the same time thousands of other cat owners are also using the app, feeding the algorithm more data, which the app uses to improve itself. Development is ongoing, with future changes reflective of user (and cat) feedback.
“A tool like this can help certain people bond even more with their cats, especially if they can’t be in contact with other people on a regular basis,” Sanchez said. “So this could be a real game changer for a key demographic that have cats.”
Applying what they’re learning via the app, Sanchez and his team are also working toward their next goal: Giving your cat a human voice. They’re developing a small device that clips on a cat’s collar and translates meows into human speech in real time.
That tech has the potential to give me nightmares. Imagine Buddy having a human voice and saying “Gimme snacks now, servant!” “Open the door, butler!” “You’re 23 seconds late with dinner!”
Maybe I’ll pass on the collar device. In the meantime I plan to download the iOS version of MeowTalk and give it a spin. I’ll report back in a week or two after giving it some time to adjust to the Budster. If any of our readers give it a shot, we’d like to hear your impressions as well.
Pain In The Bud 
Call me old-fashioned, but I like my cats just the way they are. I really don’t need another Amazon spin-off thingamajiggy to let me know what my cat is saying to me.
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I hear you on that, although I do think it has a lot of potential for improving communication, especially for people who may not be as attuned to their cat’s distinct vocalizations.
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Tux says if you need an app to understand me, you are not worthy, human!
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Buddy already considers me unworthy so I’ve got nothing to lose. 🙂
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This is without doubt a great invention but it may not be useful in multi-cat households. Can you imagine the ongoing cries of “I want food! No, not that kind, the other one! Play with me! Clean my litterbox! Pet me!” etc from several cats?
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The app allows you to create separate profiles for each cat, but yeah, having multiple cats would certainly complicate things.
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I don’t need an app to know what Holly is saying. I’ve has cats since I was 2 yrs. old!
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That seems to be the response from a lot of people, but I think the machine learning aspect is interesting and could yield some important insights. Even if the app “only” manages to get tens of thousands of people participating in the listening/learning features, that’s still a lot of data, and the machines can see patterns and infer things we can’t. There may be entirely new layers of nuance we can learn. At the very least it could teach us to be better servants to our cats!
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Steve, I agree in that if you have a cat who has special needs or is sick, being better able to distinguish his needs i.e., “mommy I need my pain medication,” rather- I HURT, ect..would go a long way. The more people that give feedback on this Application the better educated we cat servants will be in the future. My Merlin was very clear and concise in making a request. But I had been working with cats my whole life and Merlin was not my first boy, and their language is 3 fold, TELEPATHIC- VOCAL- PHYSICAL = A SENTANCE. Learning their language is not only overwhelmingly helpful to your babies but a great honor if you pass the class!! (note* I tried the App, was not impressed but it’s new right? Needs work..)
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That reminds me, I did not get to try out the app because I had an iphone 6 Plus on its last legs and the OS was taking up almost all the measly 16gb of storage. I just got a new phone so now I will get to try out the meow app. 🙂 Even Waze needed a lot of work when it was first released, I’m sure this one will improve with time.
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*had
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Frank wants to know when they’re going to come up with an app that translates human speech into cat:
“For years, she’s used this word that I just don’t understand, ‘no.’ I’d be very interested in finding out what it means!”
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Buddy says “no” means you can do whatever action you intend to do, but you just have to wait until human is gone/not looking or paying attention. Then it’s all good!
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