Ruling — Cat Lady

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cat Ladybg-228504-en-1e

Setup

1. Shuffle the 13 stray cat cards to form a face down stray cat deck.[1]

2. For a 2-player game, remove all game cards with a number 3+ and 4 in the top right corner and return them to the box, then remove 2 cards at random and return them to the box without looking at them.[1]

3. For a 3-player game, remove all game cards with a number 4 in the top right corner and return them to the box, then remove 2 cards at random and return them to the box without looking at them.[1]

4. For a 4-player game, no cards are removed.[1]

5. Shuffle the main deck face down and deal 9 cards face up in the center of the table to form a 3x3 grid.[1]

6. Deal 3 stray cat cards face up off to the side.[1]

7. Place the cat token and all wooden food cubes off to the side.[1]

8. The player with the most cats in real life starts the game.[1]

9. The player sitting counterclockwise from the starting player takes the cat token and places it next to one of the rows or columns.[1]

Taking a Turn

1. During your turn, you must take an entire row or column of three cards from the 3x3 grid of face up game cards, excluding the row or column that the cat token is next to.[2]

2. You may play Lost Cat and Spray Bottle cards anytime during your turn.[2]

3. Move the cat token next to the row or column that you took cards from.[2]

4. Refill the row or column with three cards face up, drawn from the main deck.[2]

5. Your turn ends, and the next player clockwise around the table takes a turn.[2]

6. Players continue taking turns until the end of the game.[2]

End of the Game

1. The game ends when an empty row or column needs to be refilled and there are no cards remaining in the deck.[3]

2. Add up all victory points (VP) from cats, stray cats, costumes, catnip, toys, and VP tokens, including any penalties.[3]

3. The player with the highest total VP wins the game.[3]

4. If there is a tie for the highest total, the player with the most fed cats is the winner.[3]

5. If there is still a tie, the first player to win the next game of Cat Lady is the winner.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook · p.3 · Components · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook · p.4 · How to Play · Taking a Turn

[3] RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook · p.5 · End of the Game · Cats · Feeding Needs · Cat Colors

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 106 ms · ask 11949 ms · total 96583 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 84524 ms · generation 12059 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "When a player finishes their turn, the next player clockwise around the table takes a turn. Players continue taking turns until the end of the game. During your turn, you must take an entire row OR column of three cards from the grid of 3x3 face up game cards (you cannot take a diagonal row). Howeve", "headingPath": "How to Play · Taking a Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "When you take lost cat cards, keep them in your hand until you choose to play them during one of your turns. You may discard 2 lost cat cards from your hand to \"find\" one of the face up stray cats cards and add it to your cat area in front of you. Stray cats are like regular cat cards and must be fu", "headingPath": "Lost Cat · Finding Stray Cats · Gain VP · Spray Bottles · Florence, Antoinette, Eliot · Macak · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Game Design: Josh Wood Development: John Goodenough Art: Josh Wood Layout: Marco Morte Editing: Nicolas Bongiu Production: Dave Lepore © 2017 Alderac Entertainment Group. Cat Lady and all related marks are ™ and © Alderac Entertainment Group, Inc. 555 N El Camino Real #A393 San Clemente, CA 92672 US", "headingPath": "Credits · Copyright & Contact", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": ") Shuffle the 13 stray cat cards to form a face down stray cat deck. Game cards form the main deck and will have a different number of cards depending on the number of players: 2-player game: Remove all cards with a number 3+ and 4 in the top right corner and return them to the box. Then remove 2 ca", "headingPath": "Components · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The game ends when an empty row or column needs to be refilled and there are no cards remaining in the deck. The player with the most leftover food after feeding their cats must lose 2 VP. If two or more players tie for the most leftover food, they each lose 2 VP. Players now add up all of their VP ", "headingPath": "End of the Game · Cats · Feeding Needs · Cat Colors", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Food cards are needed to feed your cats at the end of the game. There are three types of food: chicken, tuna, and milk. When you take a food card, you must immediately discard it and collect a food cube of that color which you keep until the end of the game. There are also x2 chicken, x2 tuna, and x", "headingPath": "Food · Costumes · Catnip · Toys", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Players take on the role of cat ladies, part of an elite group of people including Marie Antoinette and Ernest Hemingway. During the game, you and your fellow cat ladies will draft cards three at a time, collecting toys, food, catnip, costumes, and of course lovable cats. But watch out! Make sure yo", "headingPath": "Game Overview · Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Components · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How to Play · Taking a Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "End of the Game · Cats · Feeding Needs · Cat Colors", "sharpsignalDocId": 1082}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1082 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1082 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.89674 of 1656 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:01 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	How to Play · Taking a Turn	p.4	0.048916 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Lost Cat · Finding Stray Cats · Gain VP · Spray Bottles · Florence, Antoinette, Eliot · Macak · …	p.7	0.046696 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Credits · Copyright & Contact	p.8	0.045724 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Components · Setup	p.3	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	End of the Game · Cats · Feeding Needs · Cat Colors	p.5	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Food · Costumes · Catnip · Toys	p.6	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Game Overview · Components	p.2	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 7 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	How to Play · Taking a Turn	p.4	#1	0.048916 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Lost Cat · Finding Stray Cats · Gain VP · Spray Bottles · Florence, Antoinette, Eliot · Macak · …	p.7	#2	0.046696 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	End of the Game · Cats · Feeding Needs · Cat Colors	p.5	#5	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Credits · Copyright & Contact	p.8	#3	0.045724 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Food · Costumes · Catnip · Toys	p.6	#6	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Game Overview · Components	p.2	#7	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Components · Setup	p.3	#4	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	Components · Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	How to Play · Taking a Turn	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cat Lady — Rulebook (corpus doc 1082)	End of the Game · Cats · Feeding Needs · Cat Colors	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 106 ms · first delta 1183 ms · total 96583 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 84524 ms · retrieval 106 ms · ask 11949 ms · gateway work 12059 ms · total 96583 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2606
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 561
tok/sec: 52.5 tok/sec — 561 output tokens in 10.694 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 33s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 5s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1012), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.