Shop
 Explore 

Super popular cat video game 'Stray' is helping to save real stray cats

Not kitten around on this one.

stray saves real cats, stray video game, stray twitch, stray livestream

What a beautiful meowment.

Ready for the most pawsitive story of all time? Have we got some uplifting mews for you.

The video game Stray (released by game company Annapurna Interactive in July 2022) is unsurprisingly mega popular among feline fans. What cat lover wouldn’t love the thought of traipsing through an abandoned post-apocalyptic city as a scrappy orange tabby, unlocking clues and scratching up carpets?

Stray - State of Play June 2022 Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Gameswww.youtube.com

Turns out, the indie video game taking over the internet with memes and general stray cat fandom is doing much more than providing kitty-centric entertainment to humans—it’s doing some real good for cats IRL. AP News announced that Annapurna Interactive used livestreams of the game on Twitch to raise money for multiple animal shelters and cat-related charities.

Cat people are a different breed, no question. It’s never a passing interest, only an all-consuming adoration, bordering on obsession. So it’s no wonder really that Stray became the fourth “most watched and broadcast game” on the Twitch platform the day it launched.

In addition to setting up charity livestreams, Annapurna Interactive also offered copies of the game to Nebraska Humane Society as part of a raffle. Participants needed to pay only $5 for a chance to win the normally $30 game.

We're teaching these kittens how to turn on a PlayStation so they can play Stray, the new cat adventure game from @HKdevblog and @A_i! 🎮

Wanna play with them? Donate $5 to the shelter and you'll be entered to win a code for the game! Donate here: https://t.co/FGJhY9HNae pic.twitter.com/BFLZJCxslX
— Nebraska Humane Cats (@NHSCats) July 15, 2022

Marketing specialist Brendan Gepson told AP that within a week, the organization was able to raise $7,000 because of the giveaway, which he added was especially notable because the vast majority of those donations were from people who had never donated before.

Though the drawing has already been made, you can still donate to the Nebraska Humane Society campaign here.

New Yorkers truly got the ultimate experience, when Annapurna Interactive partnered with NYC cat cafe and adoption agency Meow Parlour for a weekend. Visitors got to play the game for free for 20 minutes, all while being surrounded by the cafe’s adorable kitty residents and maybe even go home with one! This is the stuff dreams are made of, people.

The @A_i cat cafe Stray Meow Parlour pop-up was amazing and every games industry event should be held in a room full of kittens, no exceptions. pic.twitter.com/xhh5DrBAi0
— Jules Engel (@ghoulsengel) July 24, 2022

This extra support comes at a particularly crucial time for our feline friends—”kitten season.” According to the ASPCA, “kitten season” typically takes place between March and October, though it varies across the country. Of the millions of cats that enter shelters each year, a huge majority are at-risk kittens that come in during this time period and approximately 860,000 are euthanized.

Unsurprisingly, the creators of Stray are notably cat people. The game’s website states the development team is “mostly made up of cats and a handful of humans,” and the beloved orange tabby protagonist is based on an actual adopted stray named Murtaugh. Murtaugh is so famous he even got his own interview. What a legend.

stray helps real cats

Cat GIF by Annapurna InteractiveGiphy

However, it’s one thing to have feline fondness. Annapurna Interactive came up with a truly purrfect way to put love into productive action. Never thought I’d see the day where playing a video game could help save thousands of cats nationwide, but here we are. What a time to be alive.

Be responsible, folks. Consider adopting from a shelter, be sure to spay/neuter your cat and of course, go play Stray.

From Your Site Articles

Korean mom has a perfect response to the teacher who called her son's lunches 'disgusting'

Good for her for standing up for her child's culture.

via Roman Harak/Flickr

A Korean mother and her son

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

Keep ReadingShow less

Teen with a fishing magnet found a safe full of cash. And then he returned it all to its owner.

The safe was stolen 22 years ago.

via Wikimedia Commons

It's incredible what a double-sided magnet can do.

A new trend in treasure hunting called magnet fishing has blown up over the past two years, evidenced by an explosion of YouTube channels covering the hobby. Magnet fishing is a pretty simple activity. Hobbyists attach high-powered magnets to strong ropes, drop them into waterways and see what they attract.

The hobby has caught the attention of law enforcement and government agencies because urban waterways are a popular place for criminals to drop weapons and stolen items after committing a crime. In 2019, a magnet fisherman in Michigan pulled up an antique World War I mortar grenade and the bomb squad had to be called out to investigate.

Keep ReadingShow less

Ring doorbell video captures the phenomenon of what it's like to be the default parent

Millions of us know what it's like to be the "default parent."

Toniann Marchese/TikTok

Ring doorbell video captures what it's like to be the default parent.

Kids, man. I'm not sure of the scientific way audacity is distributed, but kids have a lot of it and somehow make it cute. That audacity overload is especially interesting when you're the default parent—you know, the parent kids go to for literally everything as if there's not another fully capable adult in the house. Chances are if your children haven't sought you out while you were taking a shower so you could open up a pack of fruit snacks, then you're not the default parental unit.

One parent captured exactly what it's like to be the default parent and shared it to TikTok, where the video has over 4 million views. Toniann Marchese went on a quick grocery run and *gasp* did not inform her children. Don't you fret, they're modern kids who know how to use modern means to get much-needed answers when mom is nowhere to be found. They went outside and rang the doorbell.

Back when we were children, this would've done nothing but make the dogs bark, but for Marchese's kids, who are 3 and 6 years old, it's as good as a phone call.

Keep ReadingShow less

These incredible acoustic cameras can actually see sound

Here's how they work.

via Steve Mould/YouTube

YouTube creator Steve Mould shows us what echo looks like through an acoustic camera.

It’s bizarre to think about seeing sound, but nowadays we can do just that. If you haven’t seen an acoustic camera before, that’s because they’re mainly used for industrial purposes, but they’ve been available commercially from gfai tech since 2001.

YouTuber Steve Mould, who has a science channel with over 2.1 million subscribers, took the complicated concept of the acoustic camera and made it easy to understand in his latest video, “Acoustic cameras can SEE sound.”

In the video, Mould explains how an acoustic camera is much like your smartphone's video recorder. But it also creates visual representations of sound emanating from where it’s generated within the video.

Keep ReadingShow less