Review: Cat Lady Premium Edition (AEG)

You don’t need to dig (well, scratch) very deeply to find cat ladies everywhere you look. That’s because “cat lady” is really a general title for anyone, male or female, who truly loves cats.

History and fiction are filled with famous cat ladies of both sexes. Ernest Hemingway developed a fondness for polydactyl (six-toed) cats. Carol Danvers of Captain Marvel fame is accompanied by Goose, an alien who happens to look just like a cat.

Even Abraham Lincoln had a special fondness for cats, once reportedly saying that his cat Dixie was “smarter than my whole cabinet.”

That endless love of all things feline sits at the heart of the new “Cat Lady Premium Edition” game from Alderac Entertainment Group, a beautifully updated version of the 2017 hit.

There’s a lot to love in this new edition, so let’s not “paws” another minute before diving into the top five things you need to know about it.

Better Box and Bits

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The new version’s most obvious feature is its cat-shaped tin, replacing the original game’s two-piece cardboard box. The tin’s plastic insert provides custom storage cubbies for the cards, score pads, sticker sheets (more about that in a moment), and the food tokens. This simplifies the game setup and keeps everything organized.

The food tokens deserve a special shout-out, because they’re now wooden bits shaped and colored like milk jugs, chicken legs, and tuna cans. The “wild” food type gets its own special upgrade as well with a purple wooden piece shaped like all three foods stacked together.

Although the new edition retains the original Cat Lady gameplay, it looks a whole lot cooler on the table thanks to those new wooden bits.

Seven New Strays

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To increase replayability, the Premium Edition includes twenty stray cats instead of the originals’s thirteen. The extra cats introduce some delightful special abilities.

Voodoo rewards you for collecting cats that only eat a single item of food (one milk or one chicken leg, for instance), while Floopy gives you three victory points for each set of foods (tuna, chicken, and milk) that your cats eat.

King Fluff delivers a whopping 11 victory points, but sheds points like crazy if you have cat toys. (The King is not amused by such things.) At the other end of the spectrum, Sherry gives you zero points but reduces the amount of food your non-stray cats need to eat.

Scrappy earned special love by eating another player’s leftover food. Ginger and Torta score by eating a catnip card and a wild food, respectively.

Put Your Own Cats into the Game

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It only makes sense that if you love a game about cats, then you probably share your life with one or more cats as well. In a very clever addition, this version lets you literally put them into the game by making custom stray cat cards.

The game comes with 18 blank stray cat cards and five sheets of stickers. Just shuffle through the stickers to find a cat with the right mix of colors, then select the foods that your cat loves. Attach everything onto a blank card, then grab a pen to add a special ability and victory point amount. With that, your beloved cat makes its tabletop game premiere.

Solid Strategy Delivered with Light Play

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During the game, players collect cats, cat food, catnip, and cat accessories like costumes and toys by selecting rows or columns of cards from a three by three grid. You can also rescue stray cats along the way if you collect a pair of “lost cat” cards.

Sometimes you get exactly the cards you want, but more often you pick up an extra one (or even two) that you really didn’t need. Simple in-the-moment decisions like that give the game an interesting strategic side.

Many Ways to Win

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Most of the cards give you victory points in one way or another. Get the most points and you win the game.

Cats either have a set number of points or a sliding scale that depends on collecting other cards or food. Getting sets of the five toys and gathering the most costumes both give you nice point boosts, but if someone starts collecting catnip, beware because it creates a huge point multiplier.

Also watch the amount of food you gather, because you lose victory points at the end of the game for either having too much food or coming up short and leaving some of your cats unfed.

Verdict

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Thanks to clever mechanics, delightful artwork, and fast-yet-strategic game play, Cat Lady Premium Edition delivers the awesomeness of its original version but dressed up with more fun and fancy.

Fans of the original will want the new version for both its extra stray cats and the ability to immortalize their favorite felines as game cards. The wooden food pieces add an extra bit of beauty to the game by looking just purr-fect. (C’mon, you knew it was coming sometime.)

Whether you loved the original or just now discovered the game thanks to its new box, Cat Lady Premium Edition delivers all the fun in a gorgeous new package. It makes a great addition to any game collection.