Games are a vital part of the human experience, and that truth feels even more noteworthy during the current global pandemic. When social distancing keeps you away from friends and isolated at home, you can only binge-watch so many shows and scroll through so much social media before you’re crawling up the walls.  

You’re not a cat. Stop crawling up the walls. Play a game instead! 

Since we’re all cat-lovers here, I’ve put together a list of five games that feature cats in a major way. Enjoy, then drop in over at Facebook and tell us which is your favorite.  

Animal Crossing: New Horizons 

It seems like everyone is playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons on their Nintendo Switch right now. If you’re not, you’re missing out on a peaceful pastime of neighborly quests and adorable collections. You get to create your own little island paradise by designing the layout, decorating to your heart’s content, and inviting your anthropomorphic animal neighbors over.  

For us cat-lovers, those neighbors include TWENTY-THREE felines – from smug and smartly-dressed Raymond to peppy and pleasant Rosie to cranky and bizarre-looking Kabuki.  

Animal Crossing lets you be social in a time of social distancing – whether you’re visiting with pretend animal neighbors or sending notes to real-life friends also playing the game – and is much more pleasant than watching the news.  

My Garbage Cat Wakes Me Up at 3 AM Every Day 

My Garbage Cat Wakes Me Up at 3 AM Every Day is a game you can play right in your browser while you’re drinking your coffee, attempting to wake up after your actual cat demanded food way too early this morning. Don’t they know there’s a pandemic on and you don’t need to get out of bed for any kind of commute? Rude.  

The point of the game is simple – navigate the room as the titular garbage cat and knock things over using the on-screen directions. Your goal is to wake your owner up through an escalating ruckus that can also include meowing, crying, and kneading with “your dumb little paws.”  

Warning: you might enjoy waking up the poor stupid human in the game as much as your cat enjoys messing with you.  

Night in the Woods 

In Night in the Woods, an indie game developed by Infinite Fall and available on Steam, you play an anthropomorphic cat named Mae. She’s also a college dropout who’s just returned home where creepy things are happening in the woods. This beautifully designed game draws you into Mae’s desperate search for understanding and a place to belong – giving you space to explore her character and her story while allowing you to make decisions about her relationships that affect how the story unfolds. Some of those decisions will be stupid. It’s lovely and funny – not to mention a little sad, and a lot absorbing.  

When you want to get lost in someone else’s head and meet a bunch of charming animals wearing clothes, you can’t go wrong with Night in the Woods. 

Peace Island 

Peace Island isn’t quite available to the public yet, but it was funded in less than twenty hours for development on Kickstarter and the creator has been hard at work ever since. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to play this game on PC (with a Mac version to follow). Playing variously as nine different cats, you’ll be able to explore the open world of an island off the coast of Maine in an atmospheric game of mystery and science fiction. These nine cats are wandering around in search of their missing human companions, or the means to understand WTF happened to them. 

As the name promises, the focus of this game isn’t on combat but exploration with soft environmental graphics. Join the Patreon to get early game access! 

Piffle 

Piffle is a fast and fun arcade-style puzzle game developed by Mighty Games that you can play on your smartphone or tablet (it’s available on Android and iOS devices, and soon on the Nintendo Switch). Its design is ridiculously adorable, with cute little cat heads serving as Piffle balls that you aim at various obstacles (exploding boxes! Pinata pigs!) to remove them before they touch the ground.  

Beware: it’s an addictive and whimsical game with mesmerizing sounds and animations. And there are plenty of Piffle balls to collect, from cat-shaped doughnut heads to pirate cats to cat-shaped taco heads.  

Which game can you not wait to try? And which great video games would you add to our list?