It’s a quiet morning at home, just you, a cup of coffee, and your sweet and fluffy cat. They purr on your lap, then stand up to stretch as you set your coffee down to scroll your phone. If you were looking, you’d see the fuzzy lightbulb go off over their head. It’s the moment when their primordial feline braincell kicks into action and decides what it must do. The unattended coffee cup on the table sings its siren song to them, calling for them to push it ever so gently with their fluffy paw. Just a bit. Then a bit more. Then, with a loud crash and a very hot splash, the moment that all cats dream of arrives: a perfectly executed piece of mischief.

It’s an entertainment as old as time, as long as it’s not your cat and your coffee. Cat ownership is like knowingly engaging in a toxic relationship, where every moment of sweetness and love could be followed by an unhinged act of chaos and avarice bent on destroying any unattended glassware and hawking a furball on every shirt you’ve just finished ironing. We love them anyway, and it’s a dynamic that keeps cat owners on their toes and keeps America’s Funniest Home Videos on the air.

Cantankerous Cats, now in its third edition, channels this dynamic. In this fast paced card game, players get to take on the role of the cats, cashing in the points they earn through acts of affection to wreak havoc with acts of mischief. Can you menace your neighborhood enough to become the feline supreme? Or will your behavior tip you into feral cat territory and have you turned out on your tail?

Gameplay Overview:

The third edition of Cantankerous Cats contains the basic game, an advanced ruleset, and the Kitten Catastrophe mini expansion. In all three versions, you play as a cat sharing a house with your ‘Hoomin’. Each player has their own House, which is their play area. In the basic game, they start the game with a Cat Character card and a matching character token, one Pounce token, and a hand of three Action cards. The player’s goal is to progress their cat’s token across a central neighborhood scoreboard. If they can score their ninth mischief point while holding the Cat Toy token, they win.

The tuck box for the tokens is a great touch in keeping the components packed away nicely

There are three types of Action cards: Affection, Mischief, and Incidents. Affection cards have hearts on them, representing how many affection points they are worth. These are the warm, cuddly actions that endear a cat to its person. On their turn, players can choose to bank affection cards into their house. Mischief cards represent the devil on your kitty’s shoulder. Each mischief card has a cost, and in order to play it, you must have at least that much affection banked in your house. Affection cards can’t be split, so plan wisely to make the most out of your mischief!

More expensive cards will earn you more points, moving you up the neighborhood track. Incident cards are either green (events) or yellow (frenzy), and they often impact other players or interrupt other turns. Some especially valuable cards require a Pounce token to play. Some cards have Reflex actions, which automatically trigger from your hand when specific cards are played.

On a turn, the active player takes the Cat Toy token and draws two cards from the Food Bowl deck. Then they take two actions. They can bank one Affection card into their house, score one Mischief card in their hand to move their token forward on the neighborhood scoreboard, play one Incident card, discard their hand and redraw (being a picky eater), or buy a pounce token. After they’ve taken two actions, the player draws or discards until their hand has exactly five cards, and they pass the Cat Toy to the right, followed by a hearty Meow to show their turn is done (If you don’t do the meow, you will be judged). When an active player is about to hit the end of the neighborhood scoreboard, they announce it with their best meow yet, and if they’ve played their cards correctly, they win.

The cat character cards have standard art on one side and feral art on the other

In the advanced game, there are two win conditions. The one for Domestic cats is the same as the basic game, but the other triggers only if your cat is Feral. In this version, pounce tokens allow you to attack other cats with Mischief cards from your hand. The attacked player must defend using affection they’ve banked in their house. If they defend successfully, they get to move their tracker forward for half the attack’s value on the scoreboard.

If they can’t defend, they lose all of their banked affection and go Feral. A Feral cat can’t score Mischief points, but they can attack any Domestic cat as an action without needing to spend pounce tokens. If a Feral cat has four affection points at the start of their turn, they automatically get adopted and become Domestic again, but if they can manage their hand successfully and bank nine affection points into their territory while holding the Cat Toy, they win.

The Kitten Catastrophe expansion cards rebalance the game in a gentler direction by adding more affection and reflex actions, a good choice for younger players.

The personality and humor in the mischief cards is a highlight for the game

Game Experience:

The standout quality of this game is the presentation. The watercolor cat art is full of personality, particularly the double-sided character cards, and the embossed box under the sleeve is a beauty. Each of the action cards tell their own quirky story through the art and flavor text.

The base rules are fine. They’re functional, balanced, and the game paces itself well in the basic mode of play. Incident cards and reflex actions add some pizazz, and players have to balance their desire to score smaller mischief cards more frequently, or hold on longer to blast past their competitors with a harder to score bigger mischief card. There’s some strategy and planning that can go into the timing of how you play your cards, which keeps it from being too random. This is one of the very few games I can think of where I would recommend the basic rules to all players, regardless of level and experience.

Players take on the roll of one of the character cats

In the advanced ruleset, the more players there are, the more of a tiresome pile on the pounce system becomes. Anyone who has spent the last hour of a game of Munchkin getting within a point of winning only to be knocked back over and over again will understand how frustrating the endgame here can be. Winning in the advanced ruleset feels like a feat of luck rather than skill, either waiting for a turn where your fellow players manage not to draw the right cards to stop you, or running them out of resources so they can’t afford to pounce.

While I love the concept of your cat going feral, in practice, it delivers inconsistently. If players aren’t attacking each other enough, they may never trigger going feral, putting the whole ruleset to waste. Or worse, you could get stuck being the only feral cat while everyone else focuses on building their own house instead of tearing each other down. Conversely, if everyone focuses on attacking, it becomes a round robin where no progress can be made, drawing out the game well beyond the point of fun. The three editions of this game seem to each take a whack at rebalancing this, but it may need a fourth attempt before the advanced game is worth playing.

Final Thoughts:

I’m a cat person. My buddy Figgy Pudding is always by my side, and, while I’m not quite whimsical enough to want to incorporate ‘Hoomin’ into my daily vocab, I love a silly cat video as much as the next girl. Of all of the cat games I’ve played, this one captures particularly well the dynamic of having a feline in your home, trying to read their furry little minds and decipher if their actions are motivated by logic or an internal compass that points directly towards mayhem. Cantankerous Cats is thematically on point in a way that’s fun and sweet, and the basic game is decently entertaining and beautifully drawn. The Advanced rules though, require an appreciation for a particularly aggressive take-that style of play, which may not be every gamer’s cup of tea.

Final Score: 2.5 Stars – Playable if you’re a cat lover, but works best without the Advanced rules.

Hits:
• Captures the theme of cat ownership well
• Art is beautiful and full of personality
• Action cards are quirky and fun to read

Misses:
• Basic game is fine, but doesn’t have much flair
• Aggressive play in advanced rules can feel repetitive and draw out the ending
• Advanced rules only work well if all players are committed to the same style of play