New Map Explores World from a Cat’s Point of View

For millennia, humans have wondered: how do cats see the world? Also, what’s their deal with vacuum cleaners? While the latter question has yet to be answered, civilization came a little bit closer to answering the former this week, with a brand new street map that explores a city—from a cat’s eyes.

The map, developed by the Hiroshima prefecture, targets some of the city’s main attractions, and views them from a close-to-the-ground, “cat purrspective.” The map’s goal is to yes, explore the wonderful world of cats, but also to increase tourism to the surrounding region. Hiroshima borders Onomichi, a port town known for its large number of cats and infamous maneki-neko cat museum. To highlight the region’s local attractions, tourism officials teamed up with technicians to make the map, some of whom previously worked on Google Street View. An official from Hiroshima’s tourism department told The Wall Journal: “We were seeking to introduce a different way to look at our cities and offer a view of the streets that wasn’t available before.” Right now, the map explores a local shopping arcade, as well as surrounding areas stretching 70 km east.

For wonderful gratuitous reasons, the map’s engineers also included information about 11 pet cats kept in the area, as well as a summary of their backgrounds. To learn more about the project, check out the city of Hiroshima, here.

(Via: The Wall Street Journal)