How a catch works

Step 1. Photograph a real cat

Open the Catch tab and point the camera at a cat that is actually there. The tabby on the wall, the one outside the cafe, the one asleep under a parked scooter. You want its face and some of its body in the frame, and enough light to see it by.

You do not need the whole cat. A cat half behind a bin still reads as a cat, and a cat looking away from you usually does too. What you cannot do is import a photograph from your gallery. There is no button for it, on purpose.

Step 2. It is checked as a live cat

The photograph is sent to a verification service that decides one thing: is this a genuine, living cat, in front of the camera, right now. Screens are refused. Printouts, posters, calendars, statues and plush toys are refused. A photograph of a photograph is the exact thing the whole game is built to reject.

Step 3. Hold the can

This is the catch. You press and hold the snack can, and a cat comes for it. It stops and stares. It creeps closer with its tail up. Then it drops into a crouch and wiggles, which is the tell that the moment is coming, and puts its nose on the tin.

Let go then. That is the whole rule, and it is the only rule. Let go while it is still creeping and you spooked it. Hold on after it has sniffed and it loses interest and saunters off. A release in the window always catches, and every release is graded and named, so you always know what you did.

The catch has a page of its own, with a playable version.

Step 4. The card is filed

The cat is cut out of your photograph, lit, numbered and filed. What you get is a trading card: the cutout in a pool of light whose colour is the rarity, a name you can change, three stats, a flavour line, and a printed foot with the date and the serial.

Rarity is rolled from your timing, how confident the scan was, and whether you were standing somewhere you had caught a cat before. It is never bought. How the cards work.

Meeting the same cat again

PoCats verifies that a cat is a live cat. It does not claim to know which cat. When you catch one near where you caught another, and it looks like the same animal, the app asks you rather than deciding for you. Say yes and the sighting is added to that cat's record, so the regulars in your street accumulate a history instead of cluttering your album.

What it costs

Free to download and play. Snack cans are the energy: one per throw, a free bag of eight, one back every four hours. Coins come from catches, daily rewards and yarn balls, and buy scenes and gear for your pal.

The optional membership is the PoCats Club. It adds daily care moments with your pal, a bag of twelve cans that refills every two hours instead of four, and a weekly care box. It does not change a single number in the catch.