New app could translate cat meows in real time.

You may have heard that cats don’t meow around other cats; they only do it to mimic human language.

One of the engineers who helped develop Amazon’s Alexa, is now a project manager with a tech company that has created the app “MeowTalk”, an app that could help us meet our feline friends halfway.

Using cues like tone, MeowTalk is designed to translate you what needs your cat is communicating through meows into speech.

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The engineer said he was inspired by the NPR series “The Secret Language of Cats”, a program in which a university professor, Susanne Schötz, shares her research on decoding the way cats communicate.

“It’s not a language. They don’t share words or communicate with each other. Cats never meow at each other out in nature,” the app creator explained.

His research suggests that there are about nine basic needs and emotions that cats share, including hunger, joy, and, pain — all of which are built into the app.

Users can also report the reactions, and rate the translations or add custom ones, to help improve the app’s accuracy.

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The ultimate goal is to build the app into a collar that can translate cat meows in real time.

He tested a prototype collar on his own kitten and the anxious cat let out a meow that the collar translated to a voice saying, “I’m angry, leave me alone!”.

While the app is still being developed and improved, the engineer says he hopes this will not only be fun for cat owners, but help improve the communication and relationship between cats and their humans.

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