We loved her to bits, and we still couldn’t read her.

Mocca was rescued as a tiny kitten along with her siblings, and we adopted her. Years later she licked some bathroom cleaner while nobody was looking, and by the time any of us noticed something was off, she was already very ill.

She pulled through, and she’s 13 now. But I still think about that day. Cats are very good at hiding when something hurts, and most of what they feel comes out in tiny signals we walk straight past. So even the most devoted owners end up guessing. Is she happy, or just bored? Is that a normal amount of sleep? Has she forgiven me for the carrier yet?

Why I’m building this

I’m Catherine, and I’m a vet student. I’ve put vet school on pause to work on this, and I started the company as PetLepathy (pet telepathy, which I still think is a good joke). It’s called Pelle now, but the idea is the same as on day one: help you understand your cat, so you feel a little closer to her every day.

What Pelle is

Pelle is a node about the size of a coin. It sits on a soft sticker just in front of her ear, and it comes with a free app. After a couple of weeks the app knows what a normal day looks like for her, and each morning it shows you how yesterday went, drawn as a little version of your own cat, with a line or two in her voice.

It’s there to help you notice and understand her. It works alongside your vet, and it doesn’t diagnose anything.

Meet Latte

You’ll see a lot of our other cat, Latte, on Instagram. She’s 13 too, and she has strong opinions about cheese.

Who’s behind it

A small team of engineers and designers, plus research partners at universities and vet schools. Research labs already use our kit to study how cats behave, and around 272K people follow our cats on Instagram at @petlepathy.

understand her, feel closer to her.