Cat Lady

Five cats have been entered into a beauty pageant. None of them agreed to it. You are the groomer, and you have one clock per cat to brush the snarls out of a coat that does not want you there. Match the tool to the snarl, follow the way the fur lies, and work the pile from the top down — pull across the grain and she yelps, pull harder and the fur comes out for good and stays out all the way to judging.

Brushing. Drag right across a snarl and out the other side — only whole strokes count, and they have to run along the white arrows drawn on it. Land them back to back and a combo builds and the snarl comes apart faster. Match the colour. Every snarl wears the colour of the tool that beats it: amber wants the wide brush, purple wants the fine comb, cyan wants the rubber mitt. The wrong tool still works, at under half speed, which is usually the clock beating you rather than the cat. The grain moves. Every stroke that lands kicks the grain a random way, so read the arrows again before each pull — and the later cats kick it harder. Heat. Each stroke warms that snarl up; brush a hot one and she yowls and your combo dies, so work one for a few strokes and move on while it cools. Pinned snarls. Snarls pile two and three deep. One with a padlock and no grain on it is trapped under another and cannot be touched until the snarl sitting on it is gone — that ordering is most of the puzzle. Hurting her costs two seconds and, if you keep sawing across the grain, tears out a patch of fur that never grows back and follows her all the way to the judging. Clear every snarl before the buzzer and you pick an accessory for her, which the judges do notice. After the fifth cat all five are judged at once, and that is the only place the game ever shows you a number.