PoCats
What is a cat spotting app?
Photograph the real cats you meet and keep a collection of their cards. PoCats is free on iPhone and Android, with no adverts.
The short answer
A cat spotting app is an app for logging the real cats you meet outdoors: you photograph a cat, the app verifies it is a genuine living animal, and it is kept as a record or a collectible. PoCats is one, built around turning each verified cat into a card cut from your own photograph.
A cat spotting app is an app for logging the real cats you meet outdoors. You photograph a cat, the app checks it is a living animal rather than a picture of one, and it keeps it as a record or a collectible. Over a few weeks it becomes a catalogue of the animals living alongside you.
PoCats, CatchCat, Cat Collector, CatGO and StrayDex offer different ways to collect real cats. Compare the apps we checked by platform, price and the result you want to keep.
It is a simple idea with an unusual amount of feeling in it. You are walking somewhere. There is a cat. You photograph it, and the app keeps it: as a log entry, a journal page, or a card in a collection. Do that for a month and you have a record of the animals living alongside you that you would otherwise have forgotten by dinner.
The genre sits between three things people already do. Birders keep life lists. Collectors fill albums. And almost everyone photographs cats. A cat spotting app is what happens when those meet on a phone.
How photo verification actually works
Some cat spotting apps focus on keeping a journal. Others, including PoCats, check that a catch starts with a real cat in front of the camera. These are different approaches to recording an encounter.
PoCats sends catch photos for automated verification before the timing game begins. It checks for a live cat and rejects gallery imports. Checks can make mistakes: a refusal is not a judgement about your cat. Other apps may use on-device processing or different verification rules.
Strictness has a cost, and any honest app should own it. A dark cat at night, a cat that is mostly tail, a shot through a dirty window: real cats do get refused. The trade is that everything in your album is a cat you genuinely stood in front of.
What separates a good one
| Test | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Does it refuse a screen? | Point it at a cat on a laptop. If that becomes a collectible, the collection is decoration. |
| Does a catless day count? | Cats are not on demand. A good app gives you something for the walk itself rather than punishing you for a quiet week. |
| Where is the paywall? | In front of comfort, or in front of your own photographs. Only one of those is acceptable. |
| What does it do with location? | Blurred, expiring and optional. Exact pins on outdoor cats help nobody who means well. |
Is it safe for the cats?
Photographing a cat from where you are standing is one of the least intrusive things a person can do to an animal. The risk in this hobby is never the camera. It is what people do to get a better shot.
So: do not chase, do not corner, do not pick up a cat you do not know, do not lure one across a road with food, and do not go into a garden that is not yours. A cat that walks away has answered you. There is a longer piece on approaching a street cat kindly, and it is worth reading before your first walk.
Where PoCats fits
PoCats is a cat spotting game rather than a log. Every verified cat becomes a trading card cut from your own photograph, with a rarity, a name you can change and the place you met it. The catch is a two-second timing moment, so it fits a real animal's patience. Between cats, walking unwinds a yarn ball for snack cans and coins, so a quiet week still moves.
It is free, it contains no advertising, your album is never held behind a subscription, and paying never improves your odds. Compare PoCats with CatchCat or see the product facts.
Looking for a card from a photo you already have?
Make a free decorative cat card in your browser. It uses a photo you own and is separate from the live-camera catch in PoCats. For a better photo on your next walk, read the phone photography guide.
What is a cat spotting app?
An app for logging the real cats you meet outdoors. You photograph a cat, the app records it, and over time you build a collection or a journal of the cats in your area. The good ones verify that the photograph is of a genuine living cat.
Are cat spotting apps safe for the cats?
They are if the app is built to keep you at a distance. Photographing a cat from where you stand is harmless. Chasing, cornering, luring into a road or handling a cat you do not know is not, and no app should ask you to do it.
Do cat spotting apps show where cats live?
They should not, precisely. PoCats rounds any shared sighting to about a kilometre and deletes it after 72 hours, and you can switch sharing off entirely. Exact pins on outdoor cats are a welfare problem, not a feature.
There is one outside right now
On a wall, under a car, in a shop doorway.
