The Best Cat Themed Board Games

At our table, we own a cat. Her name is not relevant to this post but she has sat on Wingspan cards, knocked over a Catan water hex, and once ate a Codenames word card so thoroughly we had to write the replacement in biro. So when someone brings a cat-themed game to the table, there is at least one extra critic in the room.

I have played a fair number of cat games over the years, and there are genuinely excellent ones across almost every play style and weight range. Light and silly for party nights, puzzly abstracts for two, proper strategic games with cat-shaped polyominos, and one that treats the whole thing as a physics thought experiment. Whatever kind of gamer you are, there is probably a cat game for you.

This list covers the best of them, split by type, with first-person notes where I have played them and honest assessments of who each one suits.

The Best for Serious Gamers

The Isle of Cats

If you only buy one cat game for your hobby shelf, it is probably this one.

Designed by Frank West and published by The City of Games, The Isle of Cats is a competitive card-drafting and polyomino tile-placement game for one to four players. The premise is that the island of cats is about to be overrun by the villain Vesh Darkhand, and players are racing to rescue as many cats as possible by fitting them onto their boats using shaped tiles. Cats come in families, and keeping families together earns extra points. Tile placement is the core puzzle: the cat polyominos are awkward shapes that need to fit into your boat without creating too many gaps, and the gaps lose you points.

What makes The Isle of Cats genuinely excellent rather than merely charming is that the card-drafting phase creates real difficult choices. You buy lesson cards and discovery cards with fish, and never quite have enough fish to get everything you want. Different families of cats are worth different amounts. The boat fills up quickly once you start committing cats, and a bad run of tiles early can create a puzzle you cannot solve.

It plays cleanly at solo, two, three, and four players, though I find it best at two or three where the pacing feels tightest. The Family Mode, included in the base game, strips out the drafting for a simpler experience with younger players. There are also six expansions if you exhaust the base game, which takes a while.

In my experience at our table, The Isle of Cats is the game that most reliably impresses people who arrive sceptical about the cat theme. By the end of round two they are genuinely invested in whether their orange cat family will fit. One to four players (up to six with expansion), sixty to ninety minutes, ages eight and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Drafting, Tile Placement, Set Collection.

Calico

Designed by Kevin Russ and published by Flatout Games and AEG, Calico is a tile-laying puzzle game where you are trying to sew the cosiest quilt possible, and attract cats to sleep on it.

Each player has a personal quilt board with a fixed layout of empty hexagonal spaces. On your turn you place a patch tile from your hand and draw a new one from three available options. Points come from three sources: button scoring (creating specific two-by-two colour patterns), cat scoring (placing specific colour and pattern combinations that each cat requires), and completing your quilt design (matching tiles to fixed goal patches).

The three scoring vectors create a genuine puzzle. Button scoring and cat scoring frequently conflict with each other, and the tile you want for one goal is almost always the tile someone else is about to take. Calico is quick to encounter a situation where you want something, only to have it snatched from you. That frustration is a deliberate part of the game.

Calico won the 2021 Golden Geek Best Puzzle Game award and has been nominated for twelve awards in total, winning three. The artwork features real cat breeds named in the rulebook, which is a small detail but a lovely one. The solo mode plays well.

In my experience at our table, Calico is the cat game that the most non-gamers have asked to play again. Something about placing hexagonal patches and watching the quilt take shape is genuinely satisfying even when your cat scoring falls apart in the final round. One to four players, thirty to forty-five minutes, ages ten and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Tile Placement, Pattern Building, Set Collection.

The Best Trick-Taking Cat Game

Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition

Cat in the Box is a trick-taking game inspired by Schrodinger’s thought experiment: the cards in your hand have no suit until you play them. At that point, you declare what colour they are. There are four suits in the game but five cards of each rank in the deck, meaning that one combination of rank and suit will always be impossible to play before the round ends. When a player reaches a point where they cannot make a legal play, they cause a paradox and lose points.

This single idea produces a surprisingly tense game. The central tracking board, on which players mark their declarations, fills up gradually and the available moves narrow as the round progresses. You know roughly where things are heading but not quite when the crunch will come. There Will Be Games described the tension as emergent: there are no clear answers, and the board makes the mounting pressure visible rather than relying purely on memory.

Designed by Muneyuki Yokouchi and published by Bezier Games, Cat in the Box won the Trick-Taking Guild’s award in 2020 before the Deluxe Edition was released in 2022 with better components and a fifth player slot. It won or was nominated for nine awards. Meeple and the Moose captured what makes the game click: Cat in the Box is very good at making you feel responsible for your own downfall. When a plan collapses, it is usually because of a decision you made much earlier, when the consequences were not yet obvious.

In my experience at our table, Cat in the Box works best at four or five players where the paradox pressure is sharpest. At three it is still good; at two it is a different game. Essential for anyone who already enjoys trick-taking games and wants something that does something genuinely new with the format. Two to five players, twenty to forty minutes, ages thirteen and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Trick Taking, Card Games.

The Best Two-Player Cat Games

Boop.

Boop is a two-player abstract strategy game played on a six-by-six quilted board. Both players start with kittens; the goal is to graduate three kittens into cats by getting three in a row, and then get three cats in a row to win. The twist is the game’s entire identity: every time you place a piece, it boops every adjacent piece one space away. Your kittens push their kittens. Their kittens push yours. Nothing stays where it was.

The game sounds simple and plays simply, but the depth emerges quickly. Arrangements that look safe can be disrupted by a single placement. Booping a piece into a winning line is as satisfying as any chess combination, except everything is round and wooden and extremely cute.

Boop was designed by Scott Brady and published by Smirk and Laughter. It won the Origins 2023 Game of the Year, the 2023 Mensa Select award, and the 2023 American Tabletop Early Gamers award. Tabletop Bellhop described the component quality as giving the game a fantastic table presence, noting that it would have still worked mechanically as a wooden board with glass beads, but it would not have gained the same popularity.

In my experience at our table, Boop is the game that gets the most unsolicited comments from people passing by the table. Something about the round wooden cats on the quilted board just makes people stop and ask what it is. Two players, twenty to thirty minutes, ages seven and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Abstract Strategy, Pattern Building.

The Best Light Cat Games

Exploding Kittens

You probably already know about Exploding Kittens. It holds the record for the most-backed Kickstarter of its time and has since sold millions of copies worldwide. The premise is ruthlessly simple: draw cards, try not to draw an exploding kitten. Defuse it if you can. Pass the danger to your opponents if you can. Last player standing wins.

The Oatmeal’s artwork is the game’s most obvious asset: every card is a piece of absurdist comedy, and flipping through your hand is genuinely funny before you have even started playing. The mechanics are minimal, the player interaction is constant, and sessions take about fifteen minutes.

It is not a deep game, and nobody claims it is. But as an introduction to hand management and player targeting for completely new players, it is difficult to beat. The NSFW edition exists for adult groups who want something more chaotic.

In my experience at our table, Exploding Kittens works best with five or six players where the tension builds faster and the NOPE card interventions feel more satisfying. At two or three players it can feel thin. Two to five players (up to ten with the party pack), fifteen minutes, ages seven and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Card Games, Take That, Party Games.

MLEM: Space Agency

Designed by Reiner Knizia and published by IELLO, MLEM: Space Agency sends a crew of cat astronauts into space on a push-your-luck dice game.

On each turn, the active player rolls a pool of dice and decides whether to stay in the rocket or eject and claim their current score. The twist is that other players can stay in the rocket too, sharing the progress but also sharing the risk. When the rocket inevitably fails, everyone still inside loses their accumulated points. The decision of whether to stay with the group or bail early creates exactly the kind of social tension that Knizia does well in lighter games.

It is not a complex game but it does not need to be. The cat-in-space theme is committed and cheerful, and the push-your-luck dynamic creates natural moments of group negotiation and blame distribution. Tabletop Gaming called it super fun, appealing easily to all kinds of gamers.

In my experience at our table, MLEM is the cat game I reach for when there are four or more players who want something that takes ten minutes to explain. Two to five players, thirty minutes, ages eight and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Push Your Luck, Dice Games.

Cat Lady

Designed by Josh Wood and published by AEG, Cat Lady is a set-collection card game where players are competing to become the best cat carer by collecting cats, food, toys, and costumes.

The drafting mechanism is a simple one: a three-by-three grid of cards, and each player can take an entire row or column. Whatever they do not take goes to the other players or disappears. Over three rounds of drafting, you are building a collection of cats with different requirements, feeding them the right food, and scoring bonus points for costumes and toys.

It plays quickly, teaches in five minutes, and hits a sweet spot between meaningful decisions and approachability that makes it good for mixed-experience groups. There is a Box of Treats expansion that adds more cats and supports larger groups.

In my experience at our table, Cat Lady is the game that bridged non-gamers to proper hobby gaming in our group. Simple enough to learn immediately, strategic enough to care about the outcome. Two to four players, thirty minutes, ages eight and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Set Collection, Card Games, Drafting.

The Best Dexterity Cat Game

Kittin

Kittin is a tiny pocket game from Alley Cat Games. It contains a small set of adorable cat meeples in various poses and a stack of challenge cards. On your turn you draw a card and try to build the cat structure shown on it, stacking the cat pieces on top of each other in specific positions. The structure has to stay standing.

This is a game about cat stacking. That is genuinely all it is, and it is genuinely delightful. Tabletop Gaming described it as offering way more than its size suggests, with something particularly satisfying about stacking tiny kittens. It is compact enough to fit in a coat pocket, plays in ten minutes, and works for ages roughly five and up in practice.

In my experience at our table, Kittin appears at the end of longer gaming evenings as a palate cleanser, and it almost always ends with someone knocking the whole structure over to cries of grief from the people who built it. One to five players, ten minutes, ages seven and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Dexterity Games.

The Best Cat Game for Families with Children

Cobra Paw

Cobra Paw from Bezier Games is a speed tile-grabbing game in which players roll two dice showing various symbols, then race to grab the domino tile that matches those symbols. First to collect a set number of tiles wins.

The skill is reaction speed and recognition: seeing the symbols on the dice and finding the matching tile among those spread on the table before anyone else does. There is almost no rules overhead and the games run five to ten minutes. The ninja cat theme is low-key but charming.

In my experience at our table, Cobra Paw is genuinely good with mixed age groups where the adults do not simply dominate. Quick-eyed younger players often win, which is rare enough in hobby gaming to be worth noting. Two to six players, five to fifteen minutes, ages five and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Dexterity Games, Pattern Building.

The Best Cat Game for a Quiet Evening

Cat Cafe (Roll and Write)

Cat Cafe is a roll-and-write game themed around luring cats to your cafe using toys, treats, and the right arrangement of cosy spots. Players roll dice, assign results to spaces on their personal sheets, and try to maximise their cat score by round’s end.

It is a quiet game in the best sense: the table gets genuinely calm while everyone fills in their sheets and tries to connect their cat territories. Tabletop Gaming described it as the snoozing cat of cat games, something just delightful in itself, though with a slight chance of claws depending on how competitive you are.

Roll-and-writes are sometimes dismissed as too simple, but Cat Cafe does exactly what the format does best: creates meaningful choices inside minimal components with no setup time. One to six players, twenty to thirty minutes, ages eight and up.

Mechanic crossovers: Roll and Write, Dice Games.

Quick Reference: Best Cat Games by Type

For the serious hobbyist: The Isle of Cats, Calico, Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition

For the trick-taking fan: Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition

For two players: Boop, Cat in the Box

For parties and new players: Exploding Kittens, Cat Lady, MLEM: Space Agency

For families with young children: Cobra Paw, Kittin

For a quiet evening: Calico, Cat Cafe