I’m going to admit - I was ready to give up on Cat Isle. I was ready to sit here and say this game wasn’t my cup of tea, that it wasn’t what was advertised on the box, and that I wasn’t a fan. I had a whole review planned out, a whole questioning of what the game was trying to do, who I was for introducing capitalism to a zen-like cat haven, who these cats were to accept it. The words were already turning over and over in my head, waiting for me to get close enough to the end to start writing them down.

And then I saw it. This game wasn’t for me. I wasn’t playing it for me, and never had been. No, the one this game was for was the small creature on my lap, absolutely transfixed by everything going on on the screen and purring harder than I’d ever felt her purr.

Cat Isle isn’t for me. Cat Isle is for Roux.

Roux likes to play video games with me, though, admittedly, she and I have somewhat differing tastes. When I load up Slay the Spire in the morning to play over breakfast, she likes to sit with me, watching the various card actions, but not really responding until the second or third act. In the second act, she likes watching the legs of the Decimillipede and the shimmer of the Evil Dorito, though her true favourite is the Soul Nexus. She will sit, watch, and occasionally pat the screen with a polite little paw before folding it back under herself to just sit, watch, and wander off when the run gets too boring.

This is how most of our gaming sessions go. She’ll sit with me, see what I’m doing, and then wander off when she decides what I’m doing isn’t giving her treats or devoting my whole lap to her. In my heart of hearts, I recognise that she’s probably right, and that I should be spending more of both our limited times on this Earth cuddling and snuggling with her rather than slaying the same damn spire for the fourth time this week. In my defence, though, I do hug her close, hand over as much of my lap as I can, and stroke her little head while I play card after card after card.

This is how it usually went, at least until Cat Isle.

Proof that the author is not a heartless jerk

I do not know what it is about Cat Isle that appeals to Roux. It does not have the wiggly, finicky movements and bright colours that I thought appealed to her. It has soft pastel colours, soft pastel music, and a level of cosiness that borders on the saccharine. What movement there is is carefully controlled and deeply predictable. It shows pixel cats, walking back and forth across a manicured island, occasionally napping, occasionally pulling out a fishing rod, but above all, just being little figures on an island. The colours change, the day progresses, but to the best of my knowledge, Roux does not see colour, and therefore cannot appreciate that it is a pretty colour palette, actually. I don’t know what it is she sees, only that, as I play this game, she wiggles deeper and deeper into my lap and just purrs.

Roux does not believe computer time is interesting for cats.

The premise of Cat Isle is to create a utopian little island for cats, though how it defines “utopia” is a bit questionable. Players are meant to populate their islands with snack stalls, shrines, housing, and all sorts of accoutrement that is meant to appeal to the island’s cats, though in observing my own cat, I am in doubt as to how interested cats actually are in onigiri.

No, what interests Roux - what makes this her favourite game - is nothing to do with the game itself, or at least not intentionally. Cat Isle, more than anything else, wants to be cosy. It focuses on the ideal of the cat, the mythos of the cat as this little creature that pokes its tail in the air, occasionally deigns to pay attention to you, and whose affection you should be so blessed as to experience. Its cats are the platonic ideal of cat, prancing around just cat-like enough to remind the player that they are cats, but not so realistic as to be a reminder of litterboxes, fleas, and vet visits.

What they do include, though, is the purr. Players can pet the cats, and when they do so, the cats will purr. When the virtual cats purr, Roux purrs, and I get to feel it rumbling through my legs, my hips, my belly, my chest, this little creature, hearing a virtual cat purr and thinking it’s for her. She joins in the chorus of contented little purrs, purring not because I correctly guessed how many mango ice creams those virtual cats wanted, but because somewhere, something resembling a cat is cosy and content, and so, she is too.

Games can be a kind of magic. All storytelling can. There is a magic inherent to being taken from this reality and transported, however briefly, to another. Whatever may await us there, the fact that we are able to go at all is a small wonder that speaks to just how odd reality actually is. Within that, though, I am, at least, able to understand that when I load up a game, I am engaging with something that isn’t real. Even if the feelings it evokes are real, even if the story lingers long after the game is done, the world itself and the reality in which it immerses me isn’t real.

Roux doesn’t know that. When she hears the virtual cats purr, all she hears is some other being she can’t see, nevertheless communicating its joy. It brings her joy, and she chooses to share that with me. The virtual cats may not be real, but this cat, on my lap, curling up and purring to the sound of her own imagined realities, very much is. She makes the cosiness the game itself couldn’t achieve very, resoundingly real.

Cat Isle still isn’t my game. It’s not particularly interesting, and it doesn’t hold my interest. It does, however, hold hers. It brings Roux joy and leaves her with all the feelings it fails to leave me. For that reason alone, it’s worth keeping on my hard drive and loading up. It’s worth it to see this little creature’s contentedness and love shine through.

Cat Isle isn’t for me. It’s for this little creature who finds within it, joy.