When she isn’t pretending to be a dragon, my seven-year-old pretends to be a cat. “Mrrrowrrr,” she says when she pounces on me in bed in the morning. “Raawwwrrr,” she purrs when it’s time for her to line up for second grade. “Grrrrrr,” she rumbles at bedtime, her bones suddenly transforming to jelly. If certain “news” articles were to be believed, we’d have a litter box in the bathroom.

So, as a surprise, I picked up Cats Knocking Things Off Ledges. Designed by Sen-Foong Lim and David Killing, it’s as descriptive a game as they come. My seven-year-old treats it as a tornado simulator.

These cats love to climb.

On the surface, Cats Knocking Things Off Ledges isn’t meant to be a tornado simulator. Instead, it plays like a parallel version to Rhino Hero. Turns consist of three steps. First you expand your kitties’ playspace, adding one or two pillars and a single card, whether rectangular or circular, to create a new climbing platform. Second, your kitty leaps to a new space, managed by a pair of tweezers. Third, your kitty bats a toy from their perch. If it happens to land on another platform, you score points. The greater the fall, the more the score.

It’s adorable. And not in any pejorative sense. The tweezers, for example, have little kitten paws on the inside edges. The toys are wooden versions of squeaky mice and pizza slices. The platforms show fuzzy carpet for kitties to test their claws against, but it’s really their reverse side, which reveals fabric stapled to wooden bases, that feels like something you might actually stack into a climbing tree.

That adorableness extends to the rules. They’re simple, which suits the game’s format and age target. But more importantly, they capture feline caprice. Cats, according to this game, are agents of mischief. Why do they knock things off ledges? One expects the things had it coming. If the things didn’t have it coming, the cats wouldn’t have batted them from their ledges. Simple. Circular. Incontestable.

Which does make it a shame that the components are so darn light. I think back on the original Rhino Hero, before its blown-up version or Rhino Hero Super Battle made it easier to handle, or that popsicle-stick stacking simulator Tokyo Highway that collapsed as though the slightest hand tremor was a seismic event. For little fingers to make a stacking game work — and seven isn’t especially little — the components need a certain heft.

Aw.

Sure, the box rates the game for ages 10+. Fair enough. But let’s be real: those are there to cover the publisher’s backside if a kid chokes on a meeple. No matter the specific digit on the box, Cats Knocking Things Off Ledges is what a seven-year-old who wants to be a kitten and only breaks character to insist she wants chicken nuggets for dinner wants to play. Who else would it be for? It isn’t for my twelve-year-old. She regards it coolly. She doesn’t complain. She’ll humor her younger sister. But this isn’t the sort of thing she’ll directly seek out. Who else is there? Me? My wife? Sure, we have a fine time with it. But the one who jumped up and down at the sight of the box was three years below the stated age limit.

In practice, then, Cats Knocking Things Off Ledges becomes a tornado simulator. The platforms in particular are so light that their surface warps ever so slightly, closer to cardstock than proper cardboard. Not even that heavy of cardstock either. Without proper architectural planning — and, again, let’s be real here — it isn’t long before the tower teeters and shudders. At times, that’s part of the fun. Look at our tower, barely held together with thumbtacks! But when the tower keeps collapsing, especially when it collapses from even slight errors, and doubly especially when it always collapses on the youngest kiddo’s turn, well…

Well, it becomes a tornado simulator. Because the kiddo starts knocking things over on purpose. “Mrrrowwwrrr,” she says, jabbing a pillar with the kitten-stick. Everything tumbles.

Which is fine, as these things go. I’m not about to insist she play the cats-making-a-mess game properly. But it puts the game in a strange place. She adores it. But her adoration has been tempered by the fragility of this plaything. It’s so delicate that she can’t help but break it, and so the breaking has become the game. For the rest of us, Cats Knocking Things Off Ledges becomes a game about rebuilding a similar edifice over and over again, eking out one or two points at a time, and then restarting the process.

Bump!

To be honest, I’m surprised. Lim was half of the design team behind Junk Art, one of the chunkiest stacking games on the market. If only this title had received similar care. Instead, it winds up overstaying its welcome and growing repetitive within the span of a single session.

Here’s the good news: my kiddo has repurposed the pieces for building a cat tower beyond the confines of the rules. Good initiative, kitten.

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