Your pet has snuck out the door and is nowhere to be found. You run around the block, then get in your car and drive slowly through neighboring streets with eyes hyper-aware of every little movement in each bush.
You post on online bulletin boards hoping that your notice is read before it disappears beneath dozens of others.
To prevent the stress of frantic neighborhood searches and overlooked social posts, husband and wife Zach and Jennifer Munoz have created an app dedicated solely to bringing furry family members home. Furmiliar Faces is free to join, and new members can sign up through their browser without making any downloads.
When an owner reports a missing pet through Furmiliar Faces, users within a one-mile radius receive a text message with the animal’s photo and description, allowing neighbors to begin searching immediately.
The inspiration for Furmiliar Faces came from Jen’s daily walks through her Park Cities neighborhood. During those walks, she noticed how many lost animals seemed to emerge from the bushes or wander the streets. Zach has joked that she’s like Snow White because animals naturally gravitate toward her.
She would sometimes recognize the animals she saw, but she didn’t always know the owners. Sometimes, the animal didn’t have a collar, or that collar would only include the animal’s name, not their owners’ contact information.
Some pets are also too frightened to let you come near them, making it difficult to identify them and reunite them with their owners. While police can scan a found pet for a microchip, not every animal has one.
Jen and Zach began developing the idea for Furmiliar Faces several years ago. All the members of the Munoz family came together to bring it to fruition.
“It’s just been like a passion project for the whole family,” Jen said.
Advances in artificial intelligence made it possible for Zach to build the app himself. Using Claude, OpenAI, Cursor, and other development tools, he wrote the code and even used AI to troubleshoot coding issues along the way.
Zach’s efforts meant that the family didn’t need to hire a developer, pay for the work, and wait at least 12 to 18 months for a product they were confident they could create themselves. But the task required a significant time commitment.
“There were several weekends where we did not get out of our pajamas,” Jen said.
Zach and Jen’s teenage sons helped with everything from going door-to-door getting neighbors on the app to testing the app’s functionality. One of their sons plans to be a pre-vet student when he starts college at Auburn University.
The app works best when as many neighbors as possible are signed up. That’s why the Munoz family is focused on expanding its user base and encouraging residents to become, as the app’s tagline says, “a nose for the neighborhood.”
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