How to Master Catch the Cat
TLDR: The cat always walks the shortest path to the nearest open boundary cell, and it breaks ties the same way every time. Win by asking one question on each turn: which single block leaves the cat the longest walk to the edge? Close that cell, and keep closing until the walk is no walk at all. Rounds are short · a win takes about 8 to 16 taps, and a loss ends after 5 to 8.
Understanding the Core Challenge
Catch the Cat is a containment puzzle on a hexagonal board - descended from the classic “Circle the Cat” Flash game. The cat starts in the middle, and the board hands you a head start: between a fifth and a third of the cells are blocked before you play, never the centre and never the six cells around it. Each turn you tap one empty cell to block it, then the cat takes a single step along the shortest path to the nearest open boundary cell. Wall it in completely and you win; let it reach the edge and it escapes.
The cat plays a fixed, knowable strategy: breadth-first search to the nearest boundary, ties broken in a consistent direction order. That makes the game fully deterministic - the same board and the same moves always play out identically. Your edge over the cat is that its strategy is readable. Learn to trace its path and you can always stay one step ahead.
Hexagons matter here. Each cell has six neighbors instead of four, giving the cat genuine path-finding choices and forcing you to think about multiple corridors at once. The board grows with your level, and a bigger board is easier, not harder. It reaches from the centre out four rings at first and six rings at the top, which is 61 cells and then 127. The head start is a share of the board, so a bigger board hands you more walls to begin with and more turns before the cat can reach any rim.
Reading the Board: Map Escape Routes First
Before placing your first block, analyze the board. Find the cat’s position, note which cells are already blocked, and identify every open boundary cell - those are the cat’s targets.
Trace potential paths from the cat to the boundary. The cat always takes the shortest available route, so your job is to find “critical” cells: ones that, if blocked, eliminate an entire escape corridor or force a significantly longer path.
Distance mapping: Identify all open boundary cells, then work backward - which cells are one step from the edge? Two steps? This distance map reveals the shortest routes the cat will prioritize, and those are the corridors to close first.
Each block you place changes the cat’s optimal path. The sequence matters: block cells that eliminate the easiest escapes and force progressively longer routes. Think about the overall shape of remaining playable space after several blocks, not just the next single move.
The Art of Defensive Positioning
The most common mistake is blocking reactively - placing cells near where the cat just moved. Defensive play means blocking cells ahead of the cat’s path, before the corridor becomes urgent.
Think about the boundary, not just the cat. The outer ring is the cat’s goal, and its cells are drawn in a warmer shade so you can count them. But a block out there closes exactly one target and no more · the ring holds 24 cells on the small board and 36 on the large one, and you place one block per turn. You cannot seal a rim. What a well-chosen cell does instead is lengthen the walk to every target behind it.
The Funnel Strategy: Block cells on one side of the board to remove options in that direction, so the cat turns toward a pocket that the head-start walls have already half closed. Then tighten it turn by turn. Caution · a corner of the hex board sits on the boundary, so funnelling the cat “into a corner” funnels it into its own escape. The pocket you want is inside the board, ringed by blocked cells on every side but the one you still hold.
The Longest-Walk Rule. This is the one that wins, and the repository proves it: the winnability test plays each round with a player that does nothing but this, and it beats the easy board about three rounds in four. On each turn, take every empty cell in turn, imagine it blocked, and read how far the cat would then be from the nearest reachable rim cell. Play the cell that gives the largest number, and play any cell that traps the cat outright. Nothing else is needed, and nothing simpler works.
Predicting the Cat’s Move
The cat uses a fixed tie-breaking rule when several shortest paths exist, and it is not a direction it “prefers”. Its search fans out from its own cell, one ring at a time, and it takes the first rim cell that search reaches. The search tries neighbours in a set order · east, north-east, north-west, west, south-west, south-east · so the same board always produces the same step. Note there is no due north and no due south: on a pointy-top hex those two neighbours do not exist.
Watch the cat’s movement after each block. Because the order above decides which whole route wins, not which single step, the reliable way to predict the cat is to trace the routes and compare their lengths · the shortest one wins, and the order only settles a draw. Use the prediction to pre-empt: when two routes tie, close the one the order will pick, and the cat must take the longer one.
Don’t trust intuition about the cat’s intent: The cat is mathematical, not emotional. It doesn’t “want” to go right; it picks the geometrically shortest route. Always trace the actual path rather than assuming the cat will move toward or away from you based on feel.
Early Game: Set the Containment Shape
In early turns you have time and space. Use them to establish a containment shape, not to chase the cat. Look for natural choke points - narrow regions connecting the cat’s area to the boundary. These are premium blocks because they force longer paths with a single tap.
Your opening moves should eliminate the easiest escape routes. A good early block forces the cat to take a path two or three steps longer. A bad early block closes a cell the cat would never use anyway.
Think five blocks ahead: After placing each block, imagine what the board looks like five taps from now. Can the cat still reach the edge? Where would it go? Block there next rather than reacting to where it moved.
Mid Game: Tighten the Trap
As the board fills and the cat’s options narrow, prediction becomes critical. Play several moves ahead - anticipate which corridors the cat will use and close them before it arrives.
The pattern: the cat walks the shortest available path to the boundary. Block cells along that path; the cat recalculates and picks the next-shortest route. Block methodically, and the cat’s available paths grow progressively longer until it has none.
Mid-game check: There is no block budget · you may block every empty cell on the board if the cat gives you the turns. What is scarce is turns, so measure those instead. On the small board the cat’s walk to the edge starts at four and seldom passes eight even in a won round; on the large board it can reach twelve. If your number is not climbing after two taps in a row, you are blocking cells the cat was never going to use.
Lean on the head start. The pre-blocked cells are scattered at random, so somewhere on the board two or three of them already sit in a near line. That half-built wall is worth more than any cell you pick on merit, because it is free. Find it before your first tap and steer the cat toward it, rather than building a fresh wall from nothing on the other side.
Late Game: Final Containment
In the final phase you are a few moves from winning or losing. If the cat still has any path to the boundary, you must cut it on your next turn or it escapes. This phase requires absolute clarity about which cells are critical.
Before placing each final block, trace the cat’s current path fully. If blocking cell X forces the cat to cell Y, and Y has no exit except through Z, win by blocking Z on the following turn. Plan two moves ahead whenever possible.
Every block must count late: The cat moves exactly one cell per turn, always · what changes with difficulty is how thin your head-start walls are, from about a third of the board down to a fifth. Do not waste taps on cells that do not lengthen the cat’s walk. One misplaced block can hand the cat a corridor you thought was closed.
Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Surrounding too tightly too soon. The six cells around the cat are never pre-blocked, so ringing it by hand costs six taps and the cat walks out of the gap on the second one. The cat also never hides · it walks toward the nearest rim on every single turn. Lengthen its walk first, and close the ring only when the walk is already long.
Ignoring the boundary. Many players focus on the cat’s position and forget the goal is to trap it. Blocking near the boundary is often more effective than blocking near the cat.
Playing reactively. You cannot block the cell the cat stands on · the tap is simply refused. Block cells ahead of its path, not behind.
Not tracing the actual path. If you leave a five-cell corridor open, the cat will find and use it. Trace paths yourself rather than guessing.
Post-move analysis: After each block, watch the cat’s move and ask whether it went where you predicted. If not, re-examine your escape route map. The cat always reveals the shortest remaining path to freedom - use that information to plan the next block.
Difficulty and Board Size
Difficulty controls how many cells start blocked at the beginning, and the range is narrower than it feels: from about 36 percent of the board at the easiest down to a floor of 20 percent at the hardest. A hard round is not bare, it is thin. Higher levels expand the hex board from four rings to six · and because the head start is a share of the board, that expansion helps you. The measured win rate rises with board size at every difficulty, from 12 percent to 49 percent at the hardest setting.
There is no difficulty menu here, so do not look for one. Both settings ride your level together, which is why early rounds feel generous and later ones do not. Read the board before your first block · the round is short enough that a bad opening is rarely recoverable. Then treat every turn as the same logic puzzle: “if I block here, how long is the cat’s walk afterwards?” Play the answer with the largest number.
Mastery goal: When you can predict the cat’s move three to five turns in advance, and you pick the longest-walk cell without counting it out, you have the core skill. Do not measure yourself against a perfect record. A player that applies the longest-walk rule alone wins about three rounds in four on the easy board and about one in eight on the hardest small one, so a lost round there is normal rather than a mistake.
Catch the Cat rewards patience and planning over speed. The cat’s deterministic behavior is your advantage - use it.
Catch the Cat
Block cells on a hex board to wall the cat in before it slips off the edge. A pure logic puzzle · bigger board, fewer head-start walls
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