The Cat Lady Basics

The setup is simple. Set the deck for the number of players (removing cards if playing with less than 4). Next, you shuffle the deck and remove a couple more cards randomly depending on player count. Layout 9 cards in a 3×3 grid. Randomly select 3 bonus  “stray cats” for the game. Set the resources and VP tokens to the side within reach and you are pretty much ready to go. The last bit is to select a first player and place the over-sized cat meeple. The player to the right of the first player will pick a row or column to place the grey kitty in front of. This row or column will not be selectable.

After each turn, the grey cat will move to the last selected row/column. This row/column will now be off limits for the next player ( a spray bottle card can be played to scoot the cat meeple away though).

That’s it. You’re ready to go.

DRAFT YOUR CATS

The main mechanic in Cat Lady is card drafting. On their turn, each player will select a 3 card row or column. If that row contains cat cards they will be placed in a tableau in front of the player. If they contain food cards, those cards will be immediately discarded for the matching resource. Those resources will be collected in front of the player until they feed their cats at the end of the game. (For younger players it helps to let them feed their cats as they go along.)

If you have collected toys, costumes, catnip, “lost cat” posters or spray bottles they will go into your hand for use later or end game scoring.

FEED YOUR CATS

There is a nice introduction to resource management in Cat Lady. There are 3 different food resources. Tuna, chicken, and milk. There is also a wild resource that will work as any of the 3. As you gather cats into your collection, each cat will require you to feed them a number of these resources at the end of the game. You will score points for every fed cat. With some cats offering bonuses as well if they are fed.  If you can not feed a cat it will score negative points.

To stop players from hoarding resources there is a small catch. Whoever has the most leftover food at the end will also get negative points.

SET COLLECTION

Cat Lady also offers a great introduction to set collection. In the game, there are sets of cards that all score in different ways when collected. Every Cat Lady needs at least one costume or they will score -2 points. The player with the most costumes will score 6VP. Collecting toys for your cats score for variety. So having different toys will mean more and more points. There is also catnip sprinkled through the deck. Avoiding catnip is fine. Having just 1 will give you negative points though. If you get 2 or more catnip bags then you start to see some big VP returns for making your cats happy.

If you collect 2 “lost cat” posters you can trade them in to adopt one of the 3 stray cats. The stray cats each give an end game scoring bonus.  If there are no strays left or you don’t want the added responsibility that comes along with a stray (one more mouth to feed), you can trade 2 posters in for a 2VP token instead.