Cats. Trees. Cat trees.

August 17, 2021 1:27 PM

Cat trees. Reload for a new tree. Guaranteed to contain a cat tree. Not guaranteed to contain a cat. But sometimes: many cats!

via scruss on mltshp. Source code.

posted by ardgedee (53 comments total)

6 cats is my high number.
posted by AugustWest at 1:32 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Typically, the cats mostly face away….
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:44 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

You can turn the tree around.
posted by rjs at 1:52 PM on August 17, 2021 [10 favorites]

This is beautiful.
posted by that's candlepin at 1:54 PM on August 17, 2021

On the third refresh I got a tree that was one post, one platform, no cat, and it made me sad :(
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:54 PM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]

I got one that was a platform, no post or anything else, which I feel does not really conform to the definition of cat tree. But it did have a cat.
posted by tavella at 1:56 PM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]

On my very first load, I got a single platform with no cat. Just a brown square. I thought I had broken it.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:58 PM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

Does a cat ever spawn inside one of the pink tunnels? I haven't seen one yet.
posted by Quasirandom at 1:59 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

I don't know how these people got these cats into.....

come on, someone had to say it
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:59 PM on August 17, 2021 [31 favorites]

When there's no cat, that is very cat-like, so there is cat.
posted by signal at 2:05 PM on August 17, 2021 [17 favorites]

You can turn the tree around.

😺😺😺
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:09 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

I got two cats in a stare-off, which is A+++ catting
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:13 PM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]

You have to wonder where the cats are if there's a cat-less tree.
posted by vverse23 at 2:14 PM on August 17, 2021

They are either stealth catting or hanging out in the box the cat tree came in.
posted by Karmakaze at 2:14 PM on August 17, 2021 [17 favorites]

You can also zoom in and out.
posted by Karmakaze at 2:19 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

I sometimes get trees with distinctly sub-optimal hutch geometry; like, a hutch sitting alone on a platform with no ramp to it, and with support poles in front of both doors to the hutch. None of that would stop real-world cats from using it, of course, but they typically aren't designed that way.
posted by jackbishop at 2:21 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

You can also zoom in and out.

Be careful zooming in. I ended up inside a cat staring out through its unblinking eyeballs.
posted by vverse23 at 2:22 PM on August 17, 2021 [11 favorites]

First, we assume a spherical cat.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:27 PM on August 17, 2021 [15 favorites]

First load: 4 levels, 5 cats.
posted by jazon at 2:51 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

I can zoom and spin. I can reduce the image to a single pixel.

I can't reload.
posted by mule98J at 2:57 PM on August 17, 2021

Metafilter: I can zoom and spin
posted by Windopaene at 3:07 PM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]

Looking at cat-trees ran down my batt-ries
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:07 PM on August 17, 2021 [7 favorites]

This is oddly entertaining.
posted by evilmomlady at 3:12 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

You have to wonder where the cats are if there's a cat-less tree.

In the box it came in, of course.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:54 PM on August 17, 2021 [10 favorites]

This is fun! I also want more breadth of cat body designs.
posted by eotvos at 3:55 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

Always delighted to see work from a Recurse Center alum here!
posted by taltalim at 4:29 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Tangentially, I saw a circus performance on a Greek island which had a cat trainer as a feature (not tigers: house cats). A cat tree, more or less, was the central element. Charming.We didn't know you could train cats. (This was fifty years ago.) The final act was a stongman tireburning extravaganza (a guy vs. two cars.) Everybody ran out in the smoke.
posted by kozad at 5:09 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

MOG! 8 cats!
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:15 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Oh, this is about to turn into a game like Kirby where the cats push things off the cat tree, right?
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:26 PM on August 17, 2021

All cars are black in the dark trees.
posted by BlueHorse at 5:29 PM on August 17, 2021

Oh, this is about to turn into a game like Kirby where the cats push things off the cat tree, right?

Get back to me when they start pushing each other off - that, I'll watch!
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:37 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Fitting that this is posted on Black Cat Appreciation Day!
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 5:50 PM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]

On Saturday, I accidentally discovered that within a few miles of my new workplace is an entire business devoted to cat furniture (appropriately called Purrniture. Since one of my three cats is blind and not good at jumping, and another one is kind of wonkily built and also terrible at jumping, I'm going to go back and talk to them about getting a custom made piece to accommodate the two of them and their desire to climb or step onto perching spaces instead of bouncing.

This whole thing just made my week.
posted by sciatrix at 6:51 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

Be careful zooming in. I ended up inside a cat staring out through its unblinking eyeballs.

I thought you were kidding but you were not kidding!
posted by jessamyn at 7:38 PM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

I ended up with a single square, suspended in space, being sat on by a single cat. Minimum possible surface, maximum possible cat.

Now I’m afraid to refresh in case he doesn’t have anywhere to go
posted by Pallas Athena at 7:48 PM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]

#Enhancement suggestion: press a button to download hybrid Chinese-English assembly instructions.
#Enhancement suggestion: add occasional cardboard box to accommodate cat who will sit on this but never ever on the new tree - ideally the box that the tree came in.
posted by rongorongo at 1:24 AM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is blatant Schrödingery.
posted by y2karl at 1:26 AM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

blinry.github.io/cat-trees/ is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their trees, or why.
posted by radwolf76 at 5:09 AM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

→ I thought you were kidding but you were not kidding!

… inside of a cat, it's too dark to read.

I has disappoint that the view from inside a cat is not rendered
posted by scruss at 6:46 AM on August 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

no cats, just a white screen (cries, wants to see cats)
posted by a humble nudibranch at 7:38 AM on August 18, 2021

I eventually loaded a page that had a single cat, perched calmly on top of a platform supported by a very tall pole.

Cat stylite!
posted by doctornemo at 7:45 AM on August 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

I just got a 3x1 bottom platform, one end with a platform on a very tall pole, the other with a sad cat.
posted by Quasirandom at 8:25 AM on August 18, 2021

I managed to get two cats on a tree that was just a single 2x1 rectangle. Moving the viewpoint around gave a delightful impression of two cats surfing companionably through space, on their way to who knows where.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 9:58 AM on August 18, 2021

I just tried this now and got what initially looked like a bare unpopulated cat tree - but then remembered "oh wait, you can rotate the view". And when I did - surprise, cat hiding in the cubbyhole. And I was really excited!

I am easily amused, the end
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:16 AM on August 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

Being easily amused is the entire point of this OP, the end
posted by Quasirandom at 10:18 AM on August 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

Cat stylite!

I think you mean Simeon Stylites‘s Cat.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:42 AM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think you mean Simeon Stylites‘s Cat.

I can believe that, in 100 years, "St." will become "cat."
posted by eotvos at 11:59 AM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I got one with three cats sitting in the pink tunnels, but that only happened after playing around with it for quite some time.
posted by rjs at 12:13 PM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Cat-in-house is a recent upgrade: New module: cat in house
posted by scruss at 12:56 PM on August 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

Cat-in-house is a recent upgrade

I found that dramatically increases both your chances of getting a cat and the number of cats you get. The last one I generated had fourteen cats on it!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:26 PM on August 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

I now have a cat tree that's nine squares, four levels, 13 cats and 23 cat houses. Two of the houses are completely sealed off by other houses and one of those has a cat in it.
posted by ardgedee at 4:46 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

The cat-in-house addition seems to have unbalanced it towards generating WAY TOO MANY HOUSES though? I just got one which was just a base + a 3x3 wall of houses.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:57 PM on August 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

Now I’m worried cats are getting sealed inside cat houses….
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:14 PM on August 19, 2021