Cat Collector Turns the Streets Into ‘Pokémon GO for Cats’ – Real Animals Fill the Collection

Cat Collector, a mobile game in which users collect not virtual creatures but real cats they meet on the street, is gaining popularity on social media. All you have to do is photograph an animal through the app, and it turns into a separate collectible card and appears on your personal map.

The developers themselves compare the mechanic to Pokémon GO, though they stress that the project has no connection to Nintendo, Niantic or The Pokémon Company. There is no augmented reality here: the core idea is precisely to find real animals while out walking.

You can photograph your own pet, a neighbor’s cat, an animal in a store or a random street cat. Each find becomes a sticker card with a photo, a name and the place where you met.

The result is a personal map of cats you’ve met

All the animals you find are automatically saved to the Cat Map. For the person who took the photo, the app remembers the exact spot where it was taken, but other users are shown only the neighborhood.

That way the developers try to keep the location-based game mechanic while not publishing the exact coordinates of other people’s animals.

The official Cat Collector website also lists local rankings: you can see which cats most often end up in users’ collections in a particular neighborhood.

There is also a separate global feed with animals from around the world. Users can vote for cats they like and follow them, and every day the app holds a mini-competition called Top Cat, where a winner is chosen from several animals.

Cards can also be shared via Instagram Stories. If someone opens such a link, they can add the cat to their own collection. On iPhone, the animals you collect automatically become stickers for iMessage.

Разработчик сделал Pokemon Go для котов — в Cat Collector можно собирать коллекцию уличных кисок, фотографируя их.

Кроме того, в сервисе есть карта с отметками, где видели тех или иных котов, а также статистика по регионам и странам. pic.twitter.com/SwolCwIVd6

— ивус (@ogivus) October 2, 2026

Every new cat costs a ‘gem’

Cat Collector is free to download but uses an in-game currency.

Adding a new cat costs one gem, and you can get one gem free every day. Extra gems are sold separately, and a Cat Collector Plus subscription gives you three gems a day plus several additional features.

The developers note separately that photos are verified directly on the device, and AI-generated images of cats are not accepted into the collection.

Cat Collector is currently available in the App Store for iPhone and iPad. The Android version is still being prepared for launch – the official website says it is due to arrive in October 2026.

In the end, Cat Collector takes one of the most recognizable ideas from Pokémon GO – go outside, find a ‘creature’ and add it to your collection – but removes virtual characters entirely. The whole game revolves around cats that the user has actually met in the real world.