Mapping Mumbai's Meows: This Community-Driven Digital Map Will Allow You To Find & Protect City's Most Adorable Street Cats

Mumbai: In a city where thousands of street cats navigate the bustling alleyways, local train stations, and high-rises, a new website is pioneering community mapping to log, track, and protect Mumbai's vast feline population. Meowmbai, launched by Sudarshan Birla (25), is transforming casual cat sightings into actionable data to streamline animal welfare, manage stray populations humanely and foster community-led care.

IIT grad turned product manager inspired

Like any newcomer to the city, Birla also found himself in awe of the large population of stray cats on Mumbai’s streets within a year of shifting to the city. The civil engineering graduate from IIT Guwahati, now working as a product manager in Mumbai, felt that there were way too many remarkable cats in the city, and not all of them could be uploaded to his Instagram stories.

Talking to The Free Press Journal, Birla said that cats are everywhere in Mumbai, from his society’s elevator lobby to the streets of South Mumbai and he would post pictures of the strays on his Instagram stories whenever he would spot one. However, he realised that a lot of them needed veterinary help and mere admiration could not solve the structural issue of the overwhelming task of navigating through Mumbai’s massive network of NGOs and feeders to reach out for help.

Crowdsourced map lets users pin cat profiles

This led to the birth of 'Meowmbai', which allows Mumbaikars to spot, explore, and pin street cats across the metropolis. The platform operates as a crowdsourced, interactive map. Every time a resident spots a street cat, they can drop a pin, upload a photo, and create or update a unique profile for the animal. Users can also report sightings of cats that have already been uploaded to the platform and can indicate whether the feline needs medical help or adoption.

The website, which was made public on Sunday, has already registered over 170 cats on the map. Individuals who have learned about the platform through social media are anonymously uploading cat pictures to profile them, while others are reporting sightings of those already uploaded.

ML model filters images, blocks humans

To ensure data integrity and prevent the platform from becoming a generic social media feed, Birla engineered several backend guardrails. The machine learning model, trained to recognise cats, only allows cat images to be uploaded and rejects pictures where humans are posing with the cats. While the extracted metadata from each uploaded photo automatically verifies the sighting location, submissions are limited to one photo per webpage session to deter automated bots. However, a dedicated feature allows legitimate users to initiate a new session to upload another image.

The practical utility of the platform extends far beyond a visual census. By mapping a cat's specific residence, the community can effectively track its long-term well-being. "Someone like me, who is not a local and does not know a lot of people, will not be able to help easily. But whenever you map a cat, we will have a track on it when people spot one and report it in the app. They can report if there are any help requirements for the cats,” Birla said.

He believes that the data can be invaluable for local animal welfare groups, who can use the platform to reach out to a cat in need of help, get it treated, and even get it adopted by fellow cat lovers.

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