On any given day, a good 1-2% of my Facebook feed is cats, but lately, it’s been a very specific sort of cats: virtual cats, the fuzzy furballs of Neko Atsume. We’re wrapping up finals week here at the university, and many of the grad students had papers due over the last few days, long, weighty papers meant to prove our worth as general human beings and to demonstrate our fitness to survive (at least, that’s how it felt). Coming as I do from a creative writing background, where the stakes are different, as well as the projects, this frenzy to produce 45-50 pages of work in this way was very new, and let me tell y’all now: there was nothing about that struggle that wasn’t damned real. This is not to say that any one form of writing is harder than any other (writing is always hard, even when it’s joyous; we are breaking off bits of ourselves to create that text, and that’s always difficult), it’s just that this was very different for me. New ground. With no rhet/comp background, I still often feel like I’m operating in a foreign language, both when I’m reading and when I’m writing. I’m learning, and enjoying what I’m learning, but it never stops being hard. I will assume that’s a good thing. At the very least, I get to study and explore such a vast array of wonder, and my colleagues are brilliant; reading their work this semester has been a revelation, and I can’t wait to see what comes out of this hell week.
But enough of that; let’s talk cats. I’d been seeing Neko Atsume screenshots for some time, and as we were prepping for finals, I decided–as one does-that what I really needed was a new game experience on my phone. I didn’t know anything about it, except that there were cats and it was adorable, and that seemed like plenty of reason to forge ahead, late to the hype party (as usual). I started my game, and as my peers were posting pictures valiantly displaying the stacks of books they were re-reading, I started posting pictures of my (virtual) cats. Each time, someone would gasp (I assume; it was text): “What’s that?” and I’d explain.
Slowly, the department fell, one by one; every time I checked Facebook, that excellent procrastination tool, a new member of the NA posse was there, proudly displaying their admission into the club, and each time, there was a new gasp: “What’s that? I need it.” And another node popped up in the network.
In between paragraphs and re-reads, we talked cats. Food. Cute items. Strategies for getting rares. A couple of our professors told us to get the hell back to work; we got the hell back to our cats. And since I do not hear any wailing in the streets tonight, I assume we all made it. The thoughts are complete (for now), the papers are submitted, and along the way, we fooled around with a lot of virtual cats.
Neko Atsume didn’t really save us. Sorry for the hyperbole. But then again, maybe it did. Maybe we needed that very passive distraction. After all, all there is to the game is a bit of management. Put out food and items, get cats. Squeal at cuteness. Take pictures. Repeat. On any given day, I think I spend about ten minutes total in the interface, less time than I spent trying to figure out the best way to cite some of my weirder sources. I probably spent more time talking about Neko Atsume than I did actually playing it; it’s a simple experience by design, never meant to be anything more than do stuff, get cats, repeat. But every time I fretted over a terrible paragraph, or lost my way, or failed to connect something that had made sense five minutes before, there it was, the little kitty face icon on my phone, offering a momentary escape into an overly elaborate garden. During finals, I haven’t had time to play a “real” game. My consoles have only been used for Netflix, and not by me, just by my family. I couldn’t spare the time to do anything else — last weekend, my parents even visited, and I barely saw them (though I hear they enjoyed their grandkids). But a minute or two to refill food dishes and snap a few pictures? I could do that, and it was soothing. In the world of Neko Atsume, there was no stress, no deadline looming. Just adorable cats.
Creator Yutaka Takasaki has wondered why the game is so popular, with millions of downloads around the world. It was a quickie project, a respite from other things (even in its creation, Neko Atsume saved the day), and while I can’t say for certain if this is the reason for all those downloads, I can say for us, it’s simple joy. The pleasure of the little furry bodies and their simple, occasional animations. The excitement of a new cat, or of catching a rare one in a visit. There’s no real challenge, other than waiting to accumulate fish (waiting is hard). Neko Atsume will not fail you, unless you neglect to feed your cats. Then you get nothing. But complete that basic thing, and cats will come. They will loll on cat trees and roll around with balls and wiggle their butts while they scratch at something, and sometimes, that’s all we need to be saved.
Some people like stress balls or kickboxing. I like refilling virtual cat dishes. Take your joy where you can find it, do the things that help you destress, and relax when it’s all over.
(and please feel free to send us your screenshots at @nymgmer on Twitter, okay? thanks.)
This piece was written for Critical Distance’s “Joy” theme for Blogs of the Roundtable.
