Play a sound. Watch the ears. Write it down.
The whole method fits in one sentence. Everything below is detail about doing it well enough that the results mean something.
- 01
Create a profile for each cat
Add your cat’s name, rough age and a personality trait. Reactions are logged per cat, so a two-cat household produces two separate pictures rather than one blurred average.
- 02
Choose a category, not a file
Pick by meaning — a greeting chirp, a settling purr, a maternal call. The library is filed by behaviour, so you are choosing an intent rather than guessing from a filename.
- 03
Play at low volume, close by
Start quiet with your cat already relaxed and within a few metres. Loud playback from another room mostly produces alarm, which is not the response you are looking for.
- 04
Watch the ears, not the mouth
Ear rotation toward the speaker is the most common response by a wide margin. Head turns, pupil changes and approach all count. A vocal reply is the exception, not the target.
- 05
Log the reaction immediately
Loved it, ignored it, disliked it — one tap, while you still remember. The timestamp is captured automatically, which is what makes the time-of-day patterns possible later.
- 06
Repeat over two weeks, then read the insights
A handful of logs is noise. Around twenty is enough for PurrPlay to show which categories land, at what hour, and what your cat reliably ignores.
What counts
A reaction is smaller than you think.
The most common mistake is waiting for something dramatic and logging nothing. These all count, and the app treats them as real data.
Log these as a response
- One or both ears rotating toward the speaker
- Head turn, or eyes opening from a doze
- Approaching, or moving to a better vantage point
- Tail tip movement from an otherwise still cat
- Pupils widening
- Any vocal reply, however small
Log these as ignored — they still matter
- No visible change at all
- A glance, then straight back to sleep
- Leaving the room without hurry
An honest “ignored” is worth more than a generous “loved it”. The insights are only as good as the logs.
In the app
Three screens do most of the work.
Sounds
102Greeting chirp
A short rolled trill, the sound a cat makes when it is pleased to see you.
How did Luna react?
What Luna responds to
Luna answers Happy sounds most often in the evening. 82% of her positive reactions land after 6pm.
How long before it tells me anything?
Roughly twenty logged reactions per cat, which for most people is about two weeks of occasional use. Below that, PurrPlay deliberately shows you counts rather than conclusions — a pattern drawn from four data points is not a pattern.
Try it on your own cat.
Coming to iOS & Android. One email, on launch day.