Cat People Are Loving a New Videogame. So Are Their Cats.
Katie Hampton’s two cats, Oliver and Yahzee, have a new favorite spot in her Los Angeles home. It’s the shelf right below her TV, and above her PlayStation 4, where they have the best view of her playing the indie videogame “Stray.” Released in July, “Stray” drops players into a desolate dystopian city, which they must navigate as a lost orange tabby who has been separated from its pack. The game’s hero isn’t your average animated cat; it scratches and yawns with striking feline fidelity. Oliver and Yahzee, Ms. Hampton says, are convinced it’s one of their own. “It’s like they want to interact with the cat. They kept touching the screen,” says Ms. Hampton, a 35-year-old creative producer for a digital media company. “The little one meowed back, which was really cute.”
Social media has ballooned with videos of players’ pets who seem enthralled by “Stray.” Cats swipe at the television as if they’re trying to grab a pawful of digital fur. Others cement themselves on a couch, coiled and springy, ready to pounce and play if that tabby ever emerges from the screen.
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In the “Stray” story, humans have disappeared from earth, and it is up to the tabby to figure out where they’ve gone. The game presents the titular tabby as tender, thoughtful and wholly capable of love. You won’t find many moments of felines’ darker proclivities—the stray is never plucking birds out of the sky or decapitating rodents. (Though it does occasionally claw up some furniture.)
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“I think it’s a big moment for cat people,” says Jason Danzelman, a 34-year-old musician from London, “People think that cats are aloof and standoffish. But I’ve had affectionate cats.” He shared a video of one of his family’s cats playing with the game on social media. When the virtual cat disappeared from the screen, the real-life feline darted its head below the television to see where it went.
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Richard Kirschner, a cat behaviorist known to viewers of the Animal Planet series “My Cat From Hell” as Jackson Galaxy, recently uploaded a YouTube video in which he played through the first hour of “Stray.” “The lesson learned is that cats can have fun anywhere,” he says, after the tabby in the game nonchalantly knocked a bucket off a rooftop. Mr. Kirschner notes many people playing “Stray” tend to land on the younger end of the cat-loving spectrum. “That breaks the stereotype of the crazy cat lady.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cat-videogame-stray-cats-11661092946 (subscription)
