Cat Cat Meowdow

You feed one cat. Then another. Then you look up and your garden is full, and there are still cats you have never met at the other end of the world.

A letter from your grandmother got you out of the city. What is waiting for you is an old house, tall grass, and a pair of eyes watching you through it.

First they run. Then they stay.

You reach out and it bolts. So you leave the food it loves and back away. The next day it comes a little closer. Then one evening you are walking home and you hear small footsteps behind you, and you turn around, and there it is. That moment is what this game is for.

One cat, then another

You think it is over when the first cat settles into your garden. It is not. Every new cat is a new temperament, a new favourite food, a new friendship. The house grows, the kitchen gets busy, the shopping list gets longer. And there are always empty lines left in the notebook.

No two cats are the same

Breed, age, temperament, favourite food. One turns its nose up at dry food and comes running for fish. One watches from a distance for days, another is in your arms on the first afternoon. Finding the way into each one is the whole pleasure.

They have lives when you are not looking

Cats know each other. They greet, they curl up beside their friends, they get tired of a crowd and wander off. Sit down in the grass and watch: friendships form that you had nothing to do with.

Build them somewhere to belong

Furnish the house room by room. Order from the market and a drone drops it at your door. Cook at the stove, fish the water. Summer turns to autumn, autumn to winter, and the valley looks like a different place every season. Once the house feels like a home, the cats move in.

The valley ends. The game does not.

A road out of the meadow. A cave mouth in the rock. Step through and you are somewhere else entirely: a crystal cave glittering under the hill, a desert with no edge to it, a realm where the rules stop working. Each one has its own light, its own weather and its own cats.

The rarest cats are waiting

Some cats will never walk into your garden. You have to go and find them. They are not ordinary animals and they do not give in easily, but win one over and it comes home with you. Your garden can hold a cat most players will never lay eyes on.

Medallions open the way

You find a medallion on the ground. It will not go in a bag. You carry it in your hands, all the way to the far end of the cave, and the moment you set it into its socket the ground shakes and the stone sinks into the earth.

Take your time

No clock, no enemies, nothing to lose. Set off on the day you feel like it, come back on the day you feel like it. The cats will be waiting.

• Cats with their own temperament, age and favourite food

• Friendships that form between them without you

• Furnishing, the market and drone delivery

• Cooking and fishing

• A day cycle and changing seasons

• The valley, a crystal cave, a desert and a realm of magic

• Legendary cats that take some finding

• Doors that open with medallions