Meowing 100 times in Stray gets you ‘A Little Chatty’ trophy

When I first saw the announcement, Stray — a game where you play as a stray cat in a dystopian world — I was instantly enthralled. Cats are my favorite thing. I also can’t ever own a cat (unless I want to get hives and possibly stop breathing, which isn’t ideal for taking care of a cat). I’ve lived the vicarious cat-loving life by liking TikToks, glimpsing my co-workers’ cats via Zoom, and also meowing really loudly with my mouth at the cat that lives in the alley behind my apartment.

Playing Stray, I noticed the game really accurately* nails an important element of being a cat. The part when the cat meows was my favorite. You can’t help but leap through. Stray’s beautifully dystopian world prompts chitters, chirps, and mews. Often, you’re meowing in response to stimuli, but sometimes it’s at the game’s humanoid robots, who are very confused about it because they think the outside world doesn’t exist and have never seen a feline. The obvious solution is to school these robots by meowing as much as humanly— erm, catly possible. This is easy because you can just hit Circle to meow whenever. This is how I earned the “A Little Chatty” trophy (on Steam, it’s an achievement) for meowing 100 times. Within 20 minutes, I had the trophy.

Image: BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna Interactive

The top percentile of meowers was mys, and it only added fuel to the fire. You can hear the cats meowing., I thought to myself as I solved the game’s environmental puzzles. Let’s meow some more.

Here’s the thing: It’s not just one meow, it’s a whole array of them. You will hear long, attention-seeking meows and playful little chirps. Sometimes, you might even hear a gruff little snarl. It is hard to know the number of different kinds because I was busy cycling through them all over again. The boiling question is answered by me: Yes, the meows are good. They are indeed very delicious.

It’s not only cute but also useful in finding your way. The environment can be triggered by meowing, such as turning on sequences of string lights which direct the player to where they want. In a sort of bait-and switch, it can lure Zurks away (those rather creepy-looking rat-like enemies). It’s a genuinely delightful way of taking something players almost certainly will love — being a cute little cat and meowing whenever you want — and making it a core part of gameplay. It’s a real meow-icle of game design.

*Not to be That guyHowever, this could be inaccurate technically for societies without humans. A study in 2020 noted that “meowing is a common and mainly human-directed vocalization,” though “adult humans show a limited capacity to extract specific information from cats’ meows.” In other words, cats meow at us but we have no heavenly idea what it means, and scientists, at one point, studied it. (I don’t know what was in the water in 2020, but a study about humans blinking at cats was published in the same year.) Studies on cat-human interactions are excellent, and there should be more. Also, StrayIt’s a great game.