Every street animal deserves a history. So we are building one.

The insight came from the records themselves.

One rescue register brought into StrayPaw held 169 open requests, and no column for who was responsible for them. Every request had been seen by someone. None of them had an owner.

That is how most street-animal care in India works today: generous, constant and almost entirely unrecorded. StrayPaw began as an attempt to give that work a memory.

A resident sees an injured dog and posts in a group. A rescuer picks it up. A vet treats it. A feeder sees it again a month later.

Each of them keeps a piece of the story, in a chat, a sheet or a notebook, and the next person starts from nothing. Care is repeated or missed. Funders cannot see what worked. Cities plan sterilisation and response without knowing where help is needed.

Mission

Make street-animal care more coordinated, accountable and informed, through technology anyone can use.

Vision

The shared information and coordination infrastructure connecting animals, communities, care organisations and cities.

1. Unknown is not zeroA place with no records is not recorded, never no animals.
2. Not examined is an answerSterilisation and vaccination have three states, not two.
3. A rate names its baseShares are shown against the animals checked, and against all on record.
4. Someone owns every caseA report reaches a queue only when an organisation takes it on.
5. Every figure names its sourceWhere a number does not exist, the page says so.
6. Independent of the fieldStrayPaw runs no programmes and competes for no grants. Free for verified organisations.

Animal records

30,288

Mostly historical registers organisations brought with them. Not a census.

Cities

28

With records on the map.

Requests for help

2,285

On the record, open and closed.

Field partner. The Pawsome People Project, Coimbatore: the organisation StrayPaw works alongside in the field.

• The map of IndiaLive
• Reporting on WhatsApp and the webLive
• The NGO workspaceLive
• City briefsLive
• Evidence reportsLive
• The AcademyLive

Still to build

1. More field partnersToday one organisation works on StrayPaw in the field, in Coimbatore.
2. Live reporting in every cityMost cities on the map hold imported history; each needs residents and teams adding to it.
3. Ward boundariesCity briefs use analysis areas of about 0.7 km², not wards. Matching municipal boundaries comes next.
4. Every Indian languageReporting should work in the language each resident speaks.

Live reports and imported history are labelled apart on every profile. Each organisation owns its records; imported sources keep their licence and credit.

• Residents’ reportsLive, on WhatsApp and the web
• Organisations’ field recordsLive, private until published
• Research datasets7,088 records · Humane Society International, IISER Kolkata, JH CreIndia Foundation and 2 more
• Government census744 records · Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying
• Organisations' own registers90 records · The Kind Hour Foundation
• Public observation platforms55 records · iNaturalist, iNaturalist contributors
• Municipal surveys21 records · Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, Greater Chennai Corporation
• Open photo archives1 records · Wikimedia Commons

How each source was checked · Illustration credits

StrayPaw is built in India, independent of the organisations it serves.

It runs no programmes and competes for no grants. It is free for verified organisations. Reporters are never named, places are shown to about 0.7 km², and nothing tracks you across sites.

• Contact formRead by the team building StrayPaw
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