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Since I enjoyed Stray and Little Kitty, Big City I said why not, another cat adventure game!! However unlike the last 2, this was probably the most depressing and infuriating “adventure” I had the displeasure of taking. Nothing against the 2 indy creators, I think in general it was pretty well made. My beef is honestly with the message of the game. (⚠️Spoilers ahead so warning just in case!⚠️) The story is about a senile old grandma named Olive, who goes to adopt a cat but she can barely take care of herself, let alone another animal. She’s on a lot of medication, lives alone because her husband passed away, and she needs to take oxygen from a tank or else she starts wheezing and passing out.
Here’s where the story just suddenly escalates quickly and goes dark fast. The grandma lives alone and her daughter lives far away so she’s unable to keep an eye on her aside sending a nurse to check on her daily. Her daughter is a horrible person because not only did she nearly attempt to suffocate her mother in her sleep with a pillow, she threw out on the street Olive’s previous cat named “Dawn”. Olive thought that Dawn ran away so she went and adopted a cat who looked identical to Dawn. When the daughter comes back with an ambulance because Olive was unresponsive for a day (and had actually passed out in her room), she then throws out the “new” Dawn on the street again. When Olive returns from her hospital stay back home, she happens to see the “old” Dawn on the street and takes her home – completely forgetting that she had adopted a new cat.
As you can see this is not going to be about “uwu i have a smol bean baby nuku to huggle” and instead is a despressing tearjerker about abandoning your pets. Now narratively the underlying point to me is that Granny Olive is old and depressing and sick and probably starting to get dementia and desperately needs some love and joy in her life, which is why she ends up adopting a cat. I think that the game really does try to portray that she loves the cat (which in turn is why the abused shelter cat she adopts warms up to her) but again, it also very clearly portrayed that she’s not really going to be capable of taking care of them and uses that conflict to tug at the heartstrings.
The “new” Dawn is now confused on why in the world she’s been replaced and tries to get back home or find a new home….but everyone in that neighborhood is an asshole dog or an asshole human who tells her to GTFO. When Dawn finally reaches Olive and starts a fight with the old Dawn over territory suddenly Olive’s senile ass brain remembers….OH RIGHT I ADOPTED A 2ND CAT OH MY GOD WHAT I HAVE I DONE. She goes on how she cannot have a 2nd cat because she already has one and instead of I don’t know – the sensible thing of bringing the cat back to the shelter – she drives “new” Dawn into a random ass abandoned farm and dumps her and drives away.
WHAT IS FUCKING WRONG WITH EVERYONE IN THIS GAME. I know the game gives you a disclaimer about pet abandonment but MAN it literally made me cry and rage at the same time because how the fuck is every person in this game a disgusting piece of shit ass excuse for a human?? But then I remembered, that my baby Mimi was also adopted at an adoption event – and then immediately returned back to the adoption place 1 week later. Luckily I had my eye on her before the adoption event and I made sure to scoop her back up and she’s been my family for the last 2 and a half years.
Now meanwhile the daughter just sucks and is basically a cartoon villain. Unlike Olive I can’t really see any kind of psychological background for why she’s acting the way she is and is really just there to make you feel sad for the cat(s) as she mistreats them. Even when Olive dumps off Dawn in the woods I could write that off as she’s going totally senile and can’t even remember “oh right I got this cat from the shelter” but meanwhile everything she does is so downright cruel. Of course, I can’t even comprehend the very concept of throwing away a pet, yet meanwhile people do it all the time…
Anyway the biggest insult to injury is at the end, Olive is forced into one of those retirement community homes where she’s monitored by nurses 24/7 and of course now both Dawns lose their place. They become friends instead of enemies and they run to where Olive now lives…..and somehow they forgive her and she adopts them both and names the other Sunrise. Umm wtf? I thought she wasn’t allowed to have 2 cats? How can these poor souls suddenly forgive her for all that they went through? Both of them being thrown away by both the grandma and her daughter and yet they somehow forgive and come back to them?? I was hoping that maybe someone would find the 2 cats and adopt them together in a deserving happy home. Instead they are just back to where they started because let’s face it – Olive probably doesn’t have much time left and once she dies, they will be homeless once again because not like her shitty daughter will take them in.
So overall the game just left a really depressing feeling and awful taste in my mouth. The random narrator had such a weird sarcastic tone it felt like he should be a talk show host – not the “voice” of the cat. I personally liked the text that portrayed the cat’s thoughts more than anything. Do I recommend this game? It’s hard to tell. It’s mostly a visual walking simulator so it’s not huge on game play and you’re really here for the cats and the story. The graphics were kinda creepy looking, especially from the human counterparts – they were ugly on the inside as much as on the outside. But the actual story is just infuriating if you’re a cat lover and it just makes your irrationally angry and upset by the end. It’s not a long game and I bought it on sale so it wasn’t that expensive either but it left me crying and miserable to the point that I don’t even want to go back to get missing Steam achievements.
So yeah, it’s rough to get through. “Do you want to feel sad and depressed about abandoned and abused shelter animals?”
Bread Master Lee 
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