Press
Writing about Chonk Finder
Everything on this page may be quoted. For anything else, or for a person to talk to, hello@chonkfinder.app, answered by the founder, usually the same day.
The story in one paragraph
Chonk Finder is a free app that turns the street cats people meet into a trading-card game. You spot a cat, photograph it, and the app works out whether it is a cat somebody nearby has already found or a new one, gives you a card for it with a name, a Chonk Level and some silly attacks, and drops it on a shared map. When four different people have found the same cat, it becomes a Chonk and its first four finders are sealed onto its card for good. It launched on the App Store and Google Play in August 2026, made by one person in Victoria, British Columbia, and its website carries hand-researched guides to the places people travel to for cats, from Istanbul to the cat islands of Japan.
Numbers you can quote
Live, from the app, refreshed every few minutes. Say when you looked.
- 959street cats found and named by players
- 63cities with a proper crowd of cats
- 25countries with at least one cat on the map
- 76researched guides to places people travel to for cats
- 4people it takes to turn a cat into a Chonk
- 4languages: English, French, Spanish, Japanese
A line from the founder
“Everybody already stops for cats. Everybody already takes the photo. I just wanted the photo to go somewhere, and for the six people on a street who all know the same cat under six different names to find each other.”
The founder of Chonk Finder, Victoria, British Columbia
What to call things
- Chonk Finder, two words, capital C and F. Not ChonkFinder, not Chonkfinder.
- A Chonk is a cat four different people have found. Before that it is a wild cat.
- First Finders are the first four people to find a cat, listed on its card permanently. Chonk’s Favorite is whoever has found it most often.
- It is a game about street cats, which includes people’s cats who go outside. It is not about stray cats only, and it is not a lost-pet service.
- The cats’ exact locations are never public. The map shows the area a cat lives in. This is the rule the whole product is built on, and it is worth a sentence.
Facts
- Free, no sign-up, no ads. The only purchase is an optional pack of ten printed cards, posted by hand.
- iPhone and Android. Launched on both stores in August 2026.
- Works with no signal: the app opens from its cache, and a photo taken offline is queued and sent later.
- Every guide on the site is researched by hand, with a walk, a map, real photographs, every photograph credited, and every claim sourced.
- Made by one person in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Logo and screenshots
Right-click and save, or link straight to the file. They may be cropped but not recoloured, and the icon should not be redrawn.
App iconSquare, on the orange. Use at any size; do not recolour.https://www.chonkfinder.app/app-icon.png
Social card1200 by 630. The one to use if you need one image.https://www.chonkfinder.app/og.png
The mapPhone screenshot. Pins fill as more people find each cat.https://www.chonkfinder.app/shot-map.png
A cardPhone screenshot. Max, a ragdoll who is king of his street.https://www.chonkfinder.app/shot-card.png
A collectionPhone screenshot. Every cat one person has found.https://www.chonkfinder.app/shot-collection.png
The leaderboardPhone screenshot. A podium for the top three.https://www.chonkfinder.app/shot-leaderboard.png
Good places to start
Where to find cats, the guides, are the part people write about first. The cats by city pages show what players have actually found. The questions people ask cover how the matching works and what the rules for the cats are. And Pokémon GO for cats is the comparison everybody reaches for, with what is the same and what is not.