Double-cat strategy · step 1 of 4

Smaller shadows

In the one-cat game a placed cat kills its whole row, column, and color. In double-cat it kills eight squares — and nothing else. Unlearn the big shadow before it fills your board with wrong crosses.

One cat, eight crosses. The rest of its row, column, and color stay open — every one of them still owes a second cat (gold’s two open squares at the top are very much alive).

The no-touch rule is the only rule that fires immediately: cats never touch, not even diagonally, so the eight surrounding squares die the moment a cat lands. Everything else waits. The row can still take one more cat. So can the column. So can the color. Cross any of them out now and you are marking squares the solution may actually need.

This is the single most common double-cat mistake, precisely because the big-shadow sweep is the correct reflex-level habit in Meowdoku, Queens, and 1★ boards. If a double duck level keeps eating your hearts, this reflex is usually the culprit.

The second cat closes the line

The middle row just got its second cat. Now the leftovers die — the two highlighted squares are free crosses.

The moment any row, column, or color receives its second cat, it flips to done and behaves exactly like a finished line in the one-cat game: everything else in it is a cross. So the sweep you already know still exists — it just waits for the count to hit two. Keep a silent tally as you play: “row done, column one-of-two, color one-of-two.”

One more spacing fact

Two cats in the same row can never sit side by side (they would touch), so a line’s pair always has at least one square between them. That innocent-looking gap is the engine behind the stretch squeeze two rungs up — file it away now.

When you import a double-cat board, MeowSolver’s Tidy up hints apply exactly these rules: neighbor crosses always, line crosses only once a line truly holds both its cats.

← Double-cat guide · Next: The pair squeeze →