About Mimo

In shortMimo is an app created in France by Romain Minetto. It reads a dog’s or cat’s behavior from a short video, with an ethological grid: body first, meaning second, and an honest confidence level. This site shares the same grid for free, one question at a time.

What Mimo does

You film your pet for ten seconds, record a sound or describe what just happened. Mimo describes what the body shows (ears, eyes, mouth, tail, posture, context), suggests what it often means, and gives you something to try. Over time, the app builds a portrait of your pet and a log you can show your vet.

Mimo does not translate meows or barks into sentences: nobody can, and we would rather say so. Mimo does not make medical diagnoses either.

How our pages are written

Every page follows the same structure: a short answer first, then the signals to read together, what you can do, and the signs that call for a vet. We write from established knowledge in animal behavior and veterinary medicine, and we cite the studies we use, with a link to the original publication.

We use artificial intelligence tools to help us research and write. Every page is reviewed, every cited study is checked against scientific publication databases (title, authors, journal, year), and a page never claims more than its sources show. When science does not know, we say so.

Pages are dated. We update them when research moves forward or when a reader points out a mistake.

Our rules

Body first: one signal alone means nothing; we read it with the rest of the body and the context.
No punishment, ever: we only recommend friendly methods based on positive reinforcement.
Vet first: a change in behavior can hide pain or illness. Our pages say when to see a vet.
No number without a source: any statistic on this site points to a published study.
No fake reviews, no fake experts: we never put words in anyone’s mouth.

Found a mistake? Have a question?

Email us at support@mimopet.fr. We fix things fast, and we thank readers who help us get it right.

96 questions, 33 breed guides, 16 long guides, 61 cited studies.

The studies we cite

Every publication cited on the site, each one checked.

ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center. Toxic and non-toxic plants.
Blackwell et al. (2013). Fear responses to noises in domestic dogs: prevalence, risk factors and co-occurrence with other fear related behaviour. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Bradshaw (2006). The evolutionary basis for the feeding behavior of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis catus). The Journal of Nutrition.
Bradshaw et al. (1997). Factors affecting pica in the domestic cat. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Byosiere et al. (2016). Investigating the function of play bows in adult pet dogs (Canis lupus familiaris). Behavioural Processes.
Cecchetti et al. (2021). Provision of high meat content food and object play reduce predation of wild animals by domestic cats Felis catus. Current Biology.
Corbee et al. (2021). A cross-sectional study on canine and feline anal sac disease. Animals.
Creevy et al. (2019). 2019 AAHA canine life stage guidelines. Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association.
Crowell-Davis et al. (2004). Social organization in the cat: a modern understanding. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.
Delgado & Hecht (2019). A review of the development and functions of cat play, with future research considerations. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Dinwoodie et al. (2019). Demographics and comorbidity of behavior problems in dogs. Journal of Veterinary Behavior.
Duranton & Horowitz (2019). Let me sniff! Nosework induces positive judgment bias in pet dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Ellis et al. (2013). AAFP and ISFM feline environmental needs guidelines. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.
Ellis et al. (2015). The influence of body region, handler familiarity and order of region handled on the domestic cat’s response to being stroked. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Evangelista et al. (2019). Facial expressions of pain in cats: the development and validation of a Feline Grimace Scale. Scientific Reports.
Faragó et al. (2010). “The bone is mine”: affective and referential aspects of dog growls. Animal Behaviour.
Hart et al. (2018). The paradox of canine conspecific coprophagy. Veterinary Medicine and Science.
Hart & Leedy (1987). Stimulus and hormonal determinants of flehmen behavior in cats. Hormones and Behavior.
Haywood et al. (2021). Providing humans with practical, best practice handling guidelines during human-cat interactions increases cats’ affiliative behaviour and reduces aggression and signs of conflict. Frontiers in Veterinary Science.
Hensel et al. (2015). Canine atopic dermatitis: detailed guidelines for diagnosis and allergen identification. BMC Veterinary Research.
Horowitz (2009). Disambiguating the “guilty look”: salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour. Behavioural Processes.
Humphrey et al. (2020). The role of cat eye narrowing movements in cat–human communication. Scientific Reports.
Jacobs et al. (2018). Factors associated with canine resource guarding behaviour in the presence of people: a cross-sectional survey of dog owners. Preventive Veterinary Medicine.
Kaminski et al. (2004). Word learning in a domestic dog: evidence for “fast mapping”. Science.
Kaminski et al. (2017). Human attention affects facial expressions in domestic dogs. Scientific Reports.
Kaminski et al. (2019). Evolution of facial muscle anatomy in dogs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Landsberg et al. (2010). Cognitive dysfunction in cats: a syndrome we used to dismiss as “old age”. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.
Litchfield et al. (2017). The “Feline Five”: an exploration of personality in pet cats (Felis catus). PLoS ONE.
Loss et al. (2013). The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States. Nature Communications.
Mariti et al. (2017). Analysis of the intraspecific visual communication in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris): a pilot study on the case of calming signals. Journal of Veterinary Behavior.
McComb et al. (2009). The cry embedded within the purr. Current Biology.
McMillan et al. (2024). Longevity of companion dog breeds: those at risk from early death. Scientific Reports.
Mills et al. (2020). Pain and problem behavior in cats and dogs. Animals.
Mohan-Gibbons et al. (2012). Preliminary investigation of food guarding behavior in shelter dogs in the United States. Animals.
Nicastro (2004). Perceptual and acoustic evidence for species-level differences in meow vocalizations by domestic cats (Felis catus) and African wild cats (Felis silvestris lybica). Journal of Comparative Psychology.
Pilley & Reid (2011). Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents. Behavioural Processes.
Pongrácz et al. (2005). Human listeners are able to classify dog (Canis familiaris) barks recorded in different situations. Journal of Comparative Psychology.
Quaranta et al. (2007). Asymmetric tail-wagging responses by dogs to different emotive stimuli. Current Biology.
Quimby et al. (2021). 2021 AAHA/AAFP feline life stage guidelines. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.
Riemer (2019). Not a one-way road: severity, progression and prevention of firework fears in dogs. PLoS ONE.
Saito & Shinozuka (2013). Vocal recognition of owners by domestic cats (Felis catus). Animal Cognition.
Saito et al. (2019). Domestic cats (Felis catus) discriminate their names from other words. Scientific Reports.
Salonen et al. (2020). Prevalence, comorbidity, and breed differences in canine anxiety in 13,700 Finnish pet dogs. Scientific Reports.
Salvin et al. (2010). Under diagnosis of canine cognitive dysfunction: a cross-sectional survey of older companion dogs. The Veterinary Journal.
Siniscalchi et al. (2018). Communication in dogs. Animals.
Siniscalchi et al. (2013). Seeing left- or right-asymmetric tail wagging produces different emotional responses in dogs. Current Biology.
Smith et al. (2021). If I fits I sits: a citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus). Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Sommese et al. (2021). An exploratory analysis of head-tilting in dogs. Animal Cognition.
Sueda et al. (2008). Characterisation of plant eating in dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Tavernier et al. (2020). Feline vocal communication. Journal of Veterinary Science.
Teng et al. (2024). Life tables of annual life expectancy and risk factors for mortality in cats in the UK. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.
Teng et al. (2022). Life tables of annual life expectancy and mortality for companion dogs in the United Kingdom. Scientific Reports.
Tiira et al. (2012). Environmental effects on compulsive tail chasing in dogs. PLoS ONE.
Topál et al. (1998). Attachment behavior in dogs (Canis familiaris): a new application of Ainsworth’s (1969) Strange Situation Test. Journal of Comparative Psychology.
van den Bos (1998). The function of allogrooming in domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus); a study in a group of cats living in confinement. Journal of Ethology.
Vinke et al. (2014). Will a hiding box provide stress reduction for shelter cats?. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Vitale et al. (2019). Attachment bonds between domestic cats and humans. Current Biology.
Vogt et al. (2010). AAFP-AAHA feline life stage guidelines. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.
Waisglass et al. (2006). Underlying medical conditions in cats with presumptive psychogenic alopecia. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
Wang et al. (2020). Quantitative translation of dog-to-human aging by conserved remodeling of the DNA methylome. Cell Systems.
Yin (2002). A new perspective on barking in dogs (Canis familiaris). Journal of Comparative Psychology.

Mimo reads behavior. It does not replace a vet.