Mikatos

Mikatos brings together the records and day-to-day coordination involved in caring for community cat colonies. Associations, carers and volunteers can keep a shared history of each colony and its cats, alongside the feeding rotas, tasks and expenses involved in looking after them.

Keeping track of care

Teams can map colony boundaries and maintain individual cat records, including treatments, sterilisation, health notes and photographs. Feeding rotas and follow-up tasks are managed alongside those records, so care history and upcoming work are available in the same place.

The application is available in English, Spanish and Valencian. Roles and colony membership determine what each volunteer can access and change, allowing several organisations to use the application while keeping their records separate.

Simplifying the application

The first version covered a broad range of possible workflows. As it developed, I reworked parts of the data model to more closely reflect the tasks involved in caring for a colony. Care cases became statuses, notes and health records. Donations and expenses were brought into a single transaction ledger, and generic shifts became a calendar organised around each colony.

Mikatos is built with Laravel and Livewire, with PostgreSQL for storage, Redis for background processing and MapLibre for drawing and exploring colonies.

Mobile app and reporting

The web application is live and I am developing a companion mobile app for use alongside. Further work includes improving cooperation between organisations, recording evidence of care work and preparing reports that can be shared with local institutions.