Seeing what oddities you can find on Google Street View is fun, but Cat Street View is simply better in every way.
CAT STREET VIEW MAP
The Cat Street View Map was created by Hiroshima prefecture in Japan as a tourism promotion. The idea was to remind us that there are plenty of different ways to explore points of interest, and offering a cat’s perspective was the perfect way to show this off.
READ ABOUT HOW CATS WANT TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD
Onomichi City is widely known for having a huge population of street cats that don’t mind the attention of hundreds of people. The Cat Street View Map is centralized on a shopping district in Onomichi, and guides visitors through a lot of known destinations like Neko no Hosomichi (Cat Alley) and a museum that’s dedicated to maneki-neko, those lucky cat figurines.
NAVIGATING AROUND
You can visit the Cat Street View by visiting this URL. The entire website is written in Japanese, but you don’t need to understand it in order to navigate the site. If you’re familiar with Google Street View then you’ll be fine here. You’ll start off in a shopping center and can move through a decent portion of the city. Ambient sounds from the shopping district play in the background–along with a few voices from some friendly felines.
Points of interest are marked with “meotags’, and can be clicked on to read more about the tags. If you can’t read Japanese then you can always try your luck with Google Translate, but some of the most interesting aspects of Cat Street View is observing how the street cats are interacting with the people and places around them.
UNDERSTANDING OUR FELINE FRIENDS
On one hand, this seems to be the end of the line for the internet. We’ve gone full circle here. On a more serious note, this kind of technology is a great example of how much more we can learn from our furry friends.
Pet owners have been known to strap collar cameras on their pets to see what their pets are up to while they aren’t there, and for the most part, it’s about what you’d expect. A lot of sleeping, walking, and sleeping. Here we can watch wild cats be wild cats.
Share what interesting things you’ve found with the Cat Street View in the comments below!
