Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes

Migrated from the project's Notion documentation ("Curiosidades — Bastidores do Felines") — things that don't show up in the product but are part of how it was made.

1. The product almost wasn't what it is today

The original idea was simple: build something educational for people who don't like cats. Teach, inform, demystify.

Partway through, it became clear that education alone doesn't transform anyone. People need to become part of the action, not just consume information — and for that, they need to connect with people already part of it: the caretakers, the protectors, the people already on duty.

That's when the product became something else: a community. And with it came a cycle that makes sense on its own:

knowledge → action → community → more knowledge

Whoever learns, acts. Whoever acts, meets other people. Whoever meets other people, wants to learn more. The cycle sustains itself.

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2. The name almost was Gatopolis

Yes. Gatopolis was on the list.

The idea was decent — cat city, something big, urban, communal. But it quickly became clear it read too much like a game — Metropolis, CityVille, that vibe. Not what the product is.

Felines won because it's neutral, plural — and because it works in English without needing translation. A small decision, but one that keeps a future international expansion open.

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3. The cat assistant is Clippy's descendant

If you used Microsoft Word in the 2000s, you probably remember Clippy — the animated paperclip assistant that popped up in the corner with tips (not always useful, but always there).

Felines' cat assistant was born from that memory: an animated character that appears contextually, at specific moments in the user's journey, with a relevant message — and then leaves.

Except instead of an office paperclip, it's a tabby cat that walks up to the camera, blinks, and walks away. Much better.

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4. I didn't know what a cat colony was

That's genuinely true. When Felines started, the founder didn't know what a cat colony was.

She has a dog, loves animals, even started an Ecology degree — but cat colony, caretaker, TNR, the vacuum effect? All new.

That turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened. Every UX decision was filtered through someone who genuinely didn't understand this world. If a piece of information didn't land, it had to be rewritten. If a flow was confusing, it had to be rethought.

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5. The colors came from the street

Felines' palette wasn't picked from a color generator or a design trend. It was pulled from the two most common street-cat colorings in Brazil: the caramel cat and the tabby cat.

These are the colors every Brazilian recognizes when they think of a street cat. From them came the logo cat — and from the logo cat came the entire palette. The orange-brown (#B66119), the golds and ochres derived from it — all of it came from the fur. The product and the character share the same chromatic identity because they're the same thing: two ways of saying who Felines is.