DeepCat: A Deep Learning Approach to Understand Your Cat's Body Language

Abstract

Pet owners experience difficulty in understanding their pets' body language and its implications for animal welfare, given that animals cannot utilize human speech to communicate their emotions and health conditions. However, previous experiments for analyzing cat behavior have demonstrated that cats are precisely expressive. DeepCat, a deep-learning approach developed in this study, translates cats' body language signals, enabling owners to discern their feline companions' intended messages and emotional states. Our DeepCat model was trained on a dataset comprising 10,000 cat images, implementing automatic labeling to track key features, including the tail, eyes, and mouth. Presented as a Flutter application, DeepCat can function everywhere, allowing owners to easily monitor their cats and make informed decisions in situations that require caution. This paper discusses the potential benefits and limitations of DeepCat and provides suggestions for future research in this domain.