# Tilcayo Cat Game — A New Cat Discovered After 100+ Years

> Tilcayo Cat Game (https://tilcayo.cat) is a free, mobile-first browser game in which the player is a tilcayo cat (Leopardus tilcayo) catching mice that pop out of holes on a moonlit lawn. The core rule: never go more than 5 seconds without catching a mouse, or the round ends. The site also has a sourced profile of the real tilcayo cat, the first new wild cat species described in more than 100 years (September 2026).

Last updated: 2026-09-25

## Pages

- [Play solo](https://tilcayo.cat/): the game itself, start screen with rules, seals and a live count of players online
- [How to play](https://tilcayo.cat/how-to-play): full rules, the mouse of the day, snake and porcupine, power-ups, the 7 hunter ranks, the 7 seals, 1v1 rules, tips and FAQ
- [About the tilcayo cat](https://tilcayo.cat/about): facts, photos, discovery story, FAQ, sources and a donation link for the only known tilcayo's refuge
- [Cat games compared](https://tilcayo.cat/cat-games): Tilcayo Cat Game vs Cat Simulator, Kitty Loves Birds, Flip Pounce, Longcat and Yeetcat — genre, controls, multiplayer, who each is for
- [1v1 online](https://tilcayo.cat/play): two players, one shared 5×5 lawn, 60-second rounds, best of three, global ranking
- [Terms & Conditions](https://tilcayo.cat/terms) and [Privacy Policy](https://tilcayo.cat/privacy)
- [Full text for LLMs](https://tilcayo.cat/llms-full.txt): everything above in one file

## The game in brief

- Genre: arcade / reflex (whack-a-mole style). Free, no account, no install; ad-supported. Works on phones, tablets and desktop browsers.
- 3D lawn at dusk. Clock: start with 5 s; each catch +0.8 s (capped at 5 s); empty slap −0.3 s.
- Porcupine and green snake: slapping them makes the cat lick its paw and stop hunting (2 s / 3 s). The snake eats mice that pop out right next to it.
- Lawn starts with 4 holes and a new one opens every 4.5 s until all 25 are dug; mice speed up smoothly.
- Daily Challenge: each day has a mouse of the day (one of 100 fancy mice, cycling every 100 days); catch 10 of it in one round. Finished days fill an album; all 100 earn a seal.
- Power-ups: Auto-catch (6 s of automatic catches), Full time (clock back to 5 s), Freeze (everything paused 4 s).
- Combos: catches under 1.5 s apart chain; 10+ is "frenzy".
- Hunter ranks by mice in one round: Sleepy Kitten 0, Curious Cub 5, Lawn Prowler 12, Night Hunter 20, Shadow Stalker 30, Yungas Legend 45, Mythic Tilcayo 65.
- Sharing: a Wordle-style text with points, one square per mouse of the day caught and the time.

## The real tilcayo cat in brief

- Leopardus tilcayo Nogales-Ascarrunz, Aliaga-Rossel, Lescroart & Eizirik, 2026 — a tiger cat (genus Leopardus) from the Bolivian Yungas cloud forest.
- First new wild cat species described since the Pampas cat in 1923.
- Described in Lescroart et al., "Phylogenomics and museomics reveal five distinct species of tiger cats in South America", Current Biology (2026), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2026.08.059.
- About 45 cm head-to-body, 25 cm tail, 1.3 kg — smaller than a house cat. Rust-orange coat, large rosettes, two dark forehead stripes.
- Only one known individual: a ten-year-old male at Senda Verde Animal Refuge, Bolivia. Not yet assessed by the IUCN.
- Identifiers: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilcayo · Wikidata Q141490808 · iNaturalist 1712052.

## Contact

- rodrigueslucass@outlook.com.br
- Donate to Senda Verde Animal Refuge: https://sendaverde.org/donate/