World's first Cat Street View Map created in Japan

The tourism board for Hiroshima in Japan has created a version of Google's Street View called Cat Street View Map.

According to the board, the website is the world's first "cat's-eye view" street map, giving a very different perspective of some of the locations in Onomichi city, about 70km east of Hiroshima city itself.

The map includes many of the features familiar to Google's human Street View users, with the ability to switch camera angles and read details about the local shops. It also contains what TechCrunch describes as "meotags": 11 local cats in the area with "biogra-fur-ical information".

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Appalling cat puns aside, the move is more than just a tourism marketing gimmick, says Techcrunch. "Cat Street View is an example of how developments in technology have gradually helped us better understand the perspective of our cat masters," it says.

While advances in drone technology has seen the industry almost triple in size, the tech website says that Cat Street View could be "a signal to venture capitalists that instead of just focusing on bird's eye views, they should also keep their ears close to the ground – about nine and a half inches off the ground, to be precise".

A Hiroshima tourism official told the Wall Street 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." They decided on a cat's-eye view because Onomichi, a port town known for its large number of cats, is also home to a museum dedicated to Japan's 'maneki-neko' cat dolls, the official said.

Margarita Noriega, writing for Vox, says she learned two lessons about the life of cats from browsing the maps. "First, everything is a door. Second, roads are entirely too big when you're so small."

The tourist board will add more locations to the map in October, including the Misode Shrine area in Onomichi, reports the Wall Street Journal.

It is currently unknown whether the maps will ever expand outside of Japan. However, response to news of the maps on Twitter has been overwhelmingly positive.