Anyone who has studied abroad will tell you that while a good portion of time abroad is spent making new friends, seeing beautiful sights and growing as a person, it can also be lonely and isolating. I spent a lot of time alone during my six months abroad. I also didn't have an international cell phone data plan, so I was restricted to only wasting time on my smartphone—my all-by-myself activity of choice—when in a wifi zone, which was not all the time. So who was there for me when I was eating alone in a wifi-free restaurant? It was Luke Skypawker, Darth Meowl, Count Mewku, and a whole slew of other animated cats I named after Star Wars characters in the recently popular game app Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector.
I downloaded the game in December after seeing my friends post about it on social media and thinking, yeah, I could use some adorable cartoon kittens in my life. For those unfamiliar, the point of the game is to log visits from all the cats in the game by buying them toys to play with and food to eat. The virtual kitties saunter into your yard, eat your food, play with your toys, and you can take pictures of them to add to your catbook. When they're done playing they leave you silver and gold sardines, which are the game's currency and can be used to buy more toys and food. Sometimes if a cat really likes you, they'll leave you a memento, like a damp matchbox or a broken comb. And in addition to being a perfect way to burn two or three minutes every couple of hours, Neko Atsume has taught me a handful of lessons that translate to the real world, where cats sometimes smell bad and expanding your backyard costs a lot more than 180 golden sardines.
1. Patience is a virtue
This is something my grandmother says a lot, and I've never applied it in my life better than when I'm playing Neko Atsume. It's essentially a waiting game, and it works in real time. You set the food out and you gotta wait a while for the cats to show up. You gotta wait, sometimes days or weeks, while you save up enough fish to buy socks and heaters and cardboard cafes for the cats to enjoy. You can only enter a password to get free fish once a day, and after five days of entering the password you get a free can of ritzy bitz cat food. In this world of instant gratification, Neko Atsume makes the player bide their time and rewards them for doing so, and Lord knows I need to be reminded daily that that's how life works.
2. It's okay to ask for help
When I first started playing Neko Atsume, I would immediately spend all of my gold sardines on the most expensive food I could buy. I assumed that the pricier food would attract rarer cats, like the baseball bat-wielding Joe DiMeowgio or the chef, Guy Furry. That wasn't the case, and in fact, spending all my gold sardines right away made it impossible to save up the 180 needed to purchase the yard expansion. So I googled it. I googled “how to get yard expansion neko atsume,” and after spending an hour or so browsing the Neko Atsume reddit forum, I had saved a couple lists of toys that yield the most gold fish. After purchasing these toys and holding off from spending gold fish on food, as the site advised, I was able to purchase the yard expansion in about a week. In the words of Kimya Dawson, “just because we use cheats doesn't mean we're not smart.”
3. Working toward a goal is an easy path to temporary fulfillment
My first goal in Neko Atsume was to purchase the yard expansion, and my vision wasn't much broader than that. I looked forward to the day when I had twice the space to fill with cat toys. Once I achieved it, I found myself in a bit of a Neko Atsume rut. Sure, I had more space, but by this time I was already receiving regular visits from all the basic cats, and had even collected a good deal of rare cats. What came next? I lost interest in the game for a few days until I decided if I wanted to keep the spark alive, to keep this app from getting lost in the annals of fad apps (anyone still have Draw Something?), I had to come up with a new goal. So googled lists of rare cats (see lesson 2), purchased the toys that would lure them, and waited to snap a pic of them in the act. Adorable and fulfilling. I've still got a few rare cats to go.
4.It's important to laugh at your own jokes
I studied abroad in a country where the majority of my interactions happened in my second language and where I wasn't familiar with all the social conventions. As someone whose self-esteem relies largely on my intelligence and social skills, spending all my time in a place where I couldn't communicate effectively all the time did a number on my image of myself. So I gave all my cats cat pun versions of Star Wars names. Not only was this fun and sort of challenging, it let me laugh at my own cleverness a few times a day, which helped me feel better about myself. Sure, I may have misunderstood what was happening around me on a regular basis for a few months, but I came up with “Lando Catrissian” and “Meowce Windu,” so I'm not a total idiot, I guess.
Realistically, it's probably only a matter of months before we all tire of Neko Atsume and send it to the app graveyard with the likes of Words with Friends, Doodle Jump and Trivia Crack. I'd like to say I'll never forget this app and all that it taught me, but that's probably not true. I bet I'll soon forget about it for a couple years until it makes a brief, nostalgic comeback within my circle of friends. I can only hope that before then, it will be replaced with another cutesy escape from reality to keep me busy when I'm lonely. See you in 2019, Obi-Wan Kitnobi, and thanks for the damaged spoon.
