A Game of Cat and Mouth

Now that my boys have well and truly fallen back down the “Coraquest” rabbit hole we went for something a bit different today that has been sat unused for ages with Jack having received it for his birthday a few months ago.

To be honest I have done a few days of mostly positive reviews and in my mind, this was going to be middling to a negative review (hence it being sat on the shelf for months). Oh, how wrong I was…

Game 6 of the “Bailey Family Sorta Summer Board Game Bonanza” is “A Game of Cat & Mouth” played by myself(37), Katie(35), Jack(7) and Toby(4).

Firstly I will start off by saying it is not often Katie joins in with our play sessions but she wandered into the room while we were playing this, Asked if she could have a go and then stayed for about 10 mins and kept saying “one more game”

The game is a dexterity game that tbh is closer to an actual sport than a board game but essentially the board folds out to make a tennis-style pitch. You then use these cat paws that have a strong magnet underneath to flick hard rubber balls onto your opponent’s side.

You start with 4 yellow balls each, there are 3 white balls in the middle on the teeth and 1 black ball in the centre.

The object of the game is to either… run out of balls on your side, get all white balls on your opponent’s side or get the black ball on your opponent’s side.

It’s fast, frantic and amazingly good fun. I enjoyed this waaaaay more than I thought I would and I can see this becoming a very regular game we play. As well as a decent amount of dexterity there is also a fair amount of strategy as to what balls to aim for or just try and dump all of yours on their side.

Component quality is outstanding, this thing, while cardboard, feels like it could withstand almost anything thrown at it. Everything is super sturdy and feels super high quality. The balls are a really nice rubber that ensures you can wedge them in nicely yet they still have a decent amount of weight behind them. The real stars of the show though are the paws. These are made of very sturdy plastic I reckon could withstand some impact and the way the magnet works to allow flicking (something that is normally reserved for elastic bands in these types of games) is ingenious. I am a DT teacher and this blew me away with just how well this is designed.

It also all folds up super easily and neatly into the box afterwards.

So yeah if you want a 1 v 1 dexterity action game this is probably about the best thing you can get at this price (sub £20 if you shop about). Honestly, this is better than table football and air hockey levels of awesome.

So yeah… the second glowing recommendation 2 days in a row…

I will try and play a bad game tomorrow.