Herding (or Stacking) Cats: 4 Cat-Themed Games

Take one part Jenga, one part card houses, and sprinkle liberally with cute cats, and you’ll get Cat Tower. Catty Fatty wants to reach the dried fish up above the shelf, and has enlisted all his friends to build a tower up to the cats.

At a glance: Cat Tower is for 2 to 6 players, ages 6 and up, and takes about 15 minutes to play. It retails for $19.99. While the game is certainly fine for young kids, the dexterity element can be tricky so use your own discretion about how well your kids can stack cards.

Components:

• 1 die
• 12 Cat tokens
• 42 Cat Cards
• 12 Catty Fatty cards

The die is a big chunky wooden die with rounded corners, and you’ll have to put the stickers on yourself. The Cat tokens are small cardboard disks–a cat icon on one side and various other icons on the other. The one odd thing to me is that the “Fish” icon on the die and the “Cat Belly” Cat token have essentially the same effect–I’m not sure why they chose two different icons for that.

The regular Cat cards come in various breeds (though there’s no difference between them as far as gameplay), and have creases so you can fold them into an upside-down U. The Catty Fatty cards have no creases and are left flat. The cards are all made of thick cardstock–thicker than usual playing cards, but not as thick as most cardboard tokens or tiles from a game.

The cards tend to unbend and flatten a little over time, which makes the game tricky–a card that is set on the tower just fine might gradually unbend over the course of a few turns, tipping the tower over later. I suppose eventually the cards may lose some of their springiness, but for now I see this unbending as a feature, not a bug.

How to play

The goal of the game is to be first to get rid of all your Cat cards.

Give each player 7 Cat cards, and place one folded Cat Card in the center of the table to start the tower (except in a 6-player game). The rest of the Cat cards go back into the box. Set the Fatty Catty cards, Cat tokens, and the die within reach. The Cat tokens should be mixed up and turned face-down.

When adding Cat cards to the tower, they should be turned 90 degrees from the card below.

On your turn, you roll the die, and then take the relevant action:

• 1 Cat: Add 1 Cat card to the tower.
• 2 Cats: Add 2 Cat cards to the tower.
• Cat Paw: Give a Cat card to another player–they must stack it on the tower (and take the penalty if it falls).
• Fish: Add 1 Cat card upside-down to the tower.
• Catty Fatty: Add 1 Catty Fatty card to the tower, reveal a Cat token and place it on the Catty Fatty card, and then take the action associated with the token.

The Cat token actions are:

• Reverse: Reverse the turn order.
• Skip: Skip the next player.
• Cats Are Equal: Collect all the Cat cards from players, and then deal them out as evenly as possible starting with the active player.
• Cat Paw: The next player gives a Cat card to another player to stack (as if they rolled the Cat Paw on the die) instead of rolling the die.
• Catty Fatty: The next player plays a Catty Fatty card and a token (as if they rolled Catty Fatty) instead of rolling the die.
• Cat Belly: The next player must stack a cat upside-down on the tower (as if they rolled a Fish) instead of rolling the die.

If you ever cause the tower to fall, you must take 2 Cat cards back into your hand as a penalty. If any Cat tokens fall, then you take 3 Cat Cards back instead. The rest of the tower is left as-is for the next player.

The game ends as soon as any player gets rid of their last card. Everyone else scores a penalty point for each Cat card left in their hand.

There’s also a “Rush for the Fish” variant, where everyone plays simultaneously. You try to stack all of your Cat cards first, then grab the die and place it on top with the “fish” side showing. First player to accomplish this wins.

The Verdict

Cat Tower is a bizarre little game, but if you like dexterity games or creepy-cute cats (or both), then you’ll get a kick out of it. Like I said above, the stacking can be pretty challenging especially when the cards are new, because they have a tendency to flatten out over time–that means that the cat’s “legs” become too wide to stay on the cat below them, causing everything to crash down. It’s a weird little feature that makes you want to place your card, and then pass the die quickly so it’s somebody else’s turn.

The die roll and tokens throw in some randomness–sometimes you’ll be able to get rid of two Cat cards in a single turn, and sometimes you might get rid of none because you’re playing a Catty Fatty card instead. The token that redistributes Cat cards can be a mixed blessing. If you have the most cards when you draw it, you might be able to slough some off on other people. But if you were ahead, you just helped them catch up.

The one thing that can be frustrating, though, is that depending on the dice rolls, the game can actually go on for quite some time. If you get way ahead and everyone else is stuck, that Cats Are Equal token can basically reset the game. And every time the tower crashes down, the game gets a little longer because Cat cards are returned to somebody’s hand.

Still the game has pretty much the same sort of appeal as any stacking game like Jenga–you’re trying to build up as high as you can without toppling it. We must have some sort of built-in pleasure centers in our brains for watching things crash, right? Cat Tower is in stores now, or available from Amazon.

Last one: Cat Stax!