Catch the Cat
Fence in the cat before it slips out of the yard β one tile at a time, on a board of hexagons.
How to Play Catch the Cat
The board is a field of hexagons with the cat in the middle and a few fences already standing. Click or tap a tile to put up a fence; the cat then jumps one tile, heading for the shortest way out. You win the moment every route to the edge is cut β the cat does not have to be walled in cell by cell β and you lose if it reaches the edge, where it slips out of the yard and is gone.
Five levels unlock in order, from Kitten Sitter to Cat Whisperer. The board grows from 9Γ9 to 13Γ13 tiles, and then the fences you are given at the start thin out, from sixteen down to eight. The fewer moves you need, the higher your score and the more of the three stars you keep; your best result on every level is saved. The first three levels allow one undo per game. And if you would rather chase a dumpling across a kitchen table, switch the skin to the gyoza β same board, same rules, same records.
A Brief History of Catch the Cat
Catch the Cat belongs to the old family of pursuit-and-blocking games, where the two sides play by different rules: one escapes, the other encircles. Its direct model is a hexagonal trap-the-cat puzzle first published as a browser game in Japan. In 2014 a Chinese remake went viral on WeChat, and since then the puzzle has traveled under many names β Trap the Cat, Cat Trap, Circle the Cat, Block the Cat. Ours keeps the hex grid and the escape logic, draws its own yard and fences, and adds a second hero: a gyoza that would rather not be caught either.
Benefits of Playing Catch the Cat
The puzzle looks like reflexes and is actually pure planning. Blocking whatever tile the cat is about to step on always loses; winning means seeing the whole escape region and closing it from the outside in. That is spatial reasoning about routes and boundaries rather than pieces, plus the patience to spend a move somewhere that looks irrelevant. A game takes a minute or two, which makes it a good puzzle for a short break and an easy one to hand to a child.
Tips and Principles for Winning at Catch the Cat
Build your wall away from the cat, not next to it: fences placed at a distance shape where it can go, while adjacent ones only redirect it. Find the nearest edge and cut that escape route first, because it is the one the cat will take. Use the fences you start with as parts of your wall β they are free moves you have already been given. Think in six directions, not four; hexagons make diagonal leaks easy to miss. And count before you click: if the cat will reach a gap in two hops and closing it takes three fences, that side is already lost β build the next ring out instead.
Questions About Catch the Cat
Is this the same game as Trap the Cat?
Yes β the same puzzle that also goes by Cat Trap and Circle the Cat: a cat on a hex grid, one blocked tile per turn, and the cat escapes at the edge. This version has its own art, five levels, scores and stars.
How does the cat decide where to go?
After each of your moves it hops one tile along the shortest way out. That is what makes it beatable: you always know which route it wants, so you can close that route a few tiles ahead of it.
Why hexagons?
Every hexagon has six neighbors, all exactly one hop away, so the cat always has more ways out than it would on a square grid of the same size. Covering six directions at once is the whole puzzle.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The board sizes itself to the screen, and a tap is all it takes.
Catch the Cat and Go: Nets, Ladders, and Cutting Off Escape
Go players spend careers on this exact problem. In Go you capture a group by taking away its liberties β its ways out β and the two classic techniques are the net, which surrounds loosely from a distance, and the ladder, which drives a stone toward the edge until it runs out of room. Catching the cat is that idea with the fighting stripped away. The Go version of the same puzzle is Atari Go, the capture game, where the whole goal is to take one stone; you can learn it in minutes and play it here against a bot. When you want the whole game, the rules of Go are a short read.
