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Cats & Soup Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Improve Your Kitchen and Maximize Your Profits

What does it take to efficiently run a kitchen?

Is it the equipment and utensils within it? The staff, perhaps? How about the well-being of anyone inside the kitchen itself? Does it take a Gordon Ramsay kind of person to be at the reins at all times? What about how the staff dresses itself? What if each member of the staff was a cat?

That last question wasn’t us being weird, it’s something to tickle your imagination — what if you run a kitchen and every single member of your kitchen… is a cat? Enough of the questions, let’s dive right into the strange world of Cats & Soup.

cats & soup guide

South Korean developer HIDEA has just released an adorable cat-themed game called Cats & Soup. You run and oversee the progress of a mysterious group of cats who decide to create dishes deep in a forest in the middle of nowhere.

As an idle game, Cats & Soup focuses on how you can best make a profit from any and all of the humble dishes that your feline fry cooks put up for sale. The real challenge of Cats & Soup is making a good enough profit to advance and improve your kitchen’s status.

If you’ve just begun and entered this most curious forest and you’re looking to discover all the secrets of this game, read our Cats & Soup guide below!

1. Ads Give Significant Boosts

You’ve seen them before, you’ll see them again. That’s right folks, the ads have come to invade the immersion of your game!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Though annoying and tedious, ads are actually quite helpful in Cats & Soup and contribute to the much-needed improvement of your kitchen. They reward you handsomely and grant you some breathing time if you’ve been in-game for long. Here are a few examples of where you will be prompted to watch ads:

Cooking Speed

cats & soup double cooking speed
Twice the speed, twice the flavor!

After watching an ad, your cats will be given a short burst of speed in cooking. Dishes will fly out onto the pass much quicker and you’ll be able to make a killing out of them easier. Although temporary, this temporary boost should carry you forward by a little and can be repeated every now and then.

Extra Reward

cats & soup ads
Extra rewards? Let’s gooo!

Whenever you log back on, you’ll find that there is a large pile of gold waiting for you. The amount this pile gives you can be multiplied by two after watching a short ad. Just like the cooking speed boost, this will definitely come in handy in your quest to get a better kitchen.

Jar Fairy

cats & soup jar fairy
O all-powerful Jar Fairy, grant us your blessings!

The mighty Jar Fairy will occasionally offer you his blessings. Through watching an ad, you’ll receive a large amount of gold and recipe points. How could you say no to that? The big guy’s trying to make your kitchen better, too.

Given that this game is of the idle variety, you’ll accumulate resources better the more you let the game play itself. The next item in this guide could suggest what could be done to progress quicker.

2. Play This Game While You Do Something Else

cats & soup idling
Sit back and let them cook.

Cats & Soup doesn’t require too much skill or concentration. True, there will be a few things that may pop up here and there (more on that later), but at its very core, this game can be left alone for long periods of time. The thought of it sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Leave the game to be and you’ll have millions of gold by the end of the week. That isn’t always the case.

There will be a climb in the numbers since your earnings greatly rely on the quality of your facilities and the dishes that come out. There are a lot of these things that affect the way your kitchen works, so it’s best to make tweaks in your kitchen when you’re thoroughly engaged with the game. If you aren’t, try playing this game while you’re doing something else.

It could be anything from reading a book, waiting for something to boil, commuting to and from work or school, etc. Playing this game on the side of your real-life task should help you progress even faster. Before you know it, you’ll be building more facilities and you’ll be producing even more dishes than before!

Leaving the game to play itself is one thing, but the reason why we are hinting at selling the dishes immediately is coming up next.

3. Sell The Dishes As They Pop Up

cats & soup half price
Look below: the red sale tag of doom! Dun dun dunnn!

Imagine cooking. Now imagine the most magnificent dish you’ve made. Now let it sit out for a while without anyone touching it. Will it get cold? Probably. Will its quality deteriorate somewhat? Most definitely.

This is the exact same reason why you should be selling any and all of the dishes your cats produce as they pop up. When the dishes are sold at a sale price (which is what happens when your pass is full if left to idle for too long), they don’t earn very much. To keep this from happening, it’s best that you sell the dishes yourself by tapping them.

You’ll earn what they’re originally worth and you’ll be using the full potential of your cat chefs and their stations when this is done. Quality beats quantity and it’s quality that you’ll be spending for most of the time.

You’ll be earning a lot, yes, but you’ll have to spend your earnings to ensure the further improvement of your kitchen.

4. Spend Money To Make Money

cats & soup upgrading
Better tools, better income.

You look through your funds and you’ll be hitting A’s, B’s, and C’s quite early on. They’re really nice figures to look at and they really give you that sense of accomplishment. But why keep them there if you aren’t gonna spend them?

This is a bit of a harsh reality, but you’ll have to spend money to make money. What we mean here is that you have to upgrade shops, buy new facilities, upgrade your recipes (they don’t cost money, but still), and more.

When given suggestions for which facility to upgrade, go with them. You may spend your money on upgrading that one shiny new facility you just built, or, after following the suggestions, you can earn your expenditures back through the sheer quantity given to you by the other facilities.

The former is counterintuitive because you’ll spend for something that doesn’t bring fast money to you. Older facilities are much easier to upgrade and it’s with these that you’ll make the majority of your earnings.

cats & soup recipe upgrades
No more dry soups and no more frozen stir fry!

As far as recipes go, we can go with the same principle as the facilities. The recipes also have a suggestion feature, allowing you to earn more from older dishes as opposed to the ones you have most recently unlocked.

Facilities and recipes help bring in a good chunk of earnings. Yet there are even more ways you can boost your earnings further.

5. Clothe And Name Your Cats For Easy Identification

cats & soup nyamagi
The plunger helps it stir the soup pot better. No, really!

It’s as this very header says!

The bonuses that come with clothes are always in effect even if they aren’t equipped. You may earn more by opening treasure chests, but the real reason why you should give clothes to your cat is because you’ll want to tell them all apart from each other. If naming every cat tickles your fancy (and it should because naming cats is fun), do give each of them a name you can easily remember.

cats & soup cat names
Why do the names make us think of giant robots on Mars?

If you aren’t sure how to name your cats, an easy way to give them names is based on their characteristics. For example, if the cat has pronounced stripes on its coat, name it “Stripes” or “Tiger”. Another way you can name your cats is by borrowing the names of characters from your favorite show, anime, video game franchise, movie, comic book, literary work, and more. Let your imagination run wild for this one.

Pretty soon, you’ll have a lot of cats in your kitchen and it may get confusing when you’re trying to remember which cat is good at doing what. This is why names are important. If you really can’t think of names, dress them up and try to remember who they are. Names can’t be beat, though, as it’ll give you that sense of familiarity with them.

But did you know that each of your cats are actually full of innate talent? You just have to put them in the right facility.

6. Get The Right Cats For The Right Jobs

cats & soup special skill
Everyone’s got a talent of some sort!

If you take a closer look at each of your cats, they have their own special skills. Some of them know how to make juice better, others know how to chop carrots more than the rest, etc. It pays to give this detail extra attention. The more they produce, the more you will earn for the improvement of your kitchen.

cats & soup cat swap
Eugene here was born to shred cabbages.

But what if your facilities are already full and you have no idea how to move them? Here’s how!

cats & soup swap 1

Tap on the cat menu on the upper left part of the screen.

cats & soup swap 2

If a cat has a greyed-out skill, that means they aren’t assigned to the facility they’ll perform best in. Tap this icon and then tap the button with circular-motion arrows to choose which cat should swap with your present one.

Just because a cat is at their favorite station doesn’t mean they’ll be happy all the time. If you really want them to be at their best, you should feed them.

7. Feed Your Cats

cats & soup mikazuki
Omnomnomnom…

Cats, much like humans, go hungry. Crazy, we know!

First you will have to get yourself some fish from the pond. After exhausting all your tries, you should come back every so often here to get more. These fish are quite valuable as the overall happiness of a cat directly affects the performance of the kitchen as a whole. Think of it as how morale affects you at work. We’re quite sure you’ll agree to this, but if you work tired or unhappy, your output will be sloppy and incoherent. You won’t get paid much either.

Let’s have a brief overview on how to fish, shall we?

cats & soup fishing 1
  • Watch the silhouettes of the fish and wait for them to approach the lure. Once they are close enough make your thumb hover over the fishing button.
cats & soup fishing 2
  • The fish will nibble at the bait but don’t pull up the line too soon; you will have to start over if you make this mistake. When the lure sinks, the fish has taken a bite. This is when you tap the fishing button. If you wait too long, the bait will be lost and you will fail to catch the fish.

The best part about fishing is that you build a collection of the fish you’ve caught so far. Finding a group of fish that match together in the collection menu will give your kitchen a permanent buff. These buffs may range from increases in food price to ingredient production or even recipe point bonuses. There is no reason for you to not fish.

Do note that some fish have varying increases to your cat’s happiness level. While some of the more common ones (minnows) raise your cat’s happiness points by 1, it really pays to save your more powerful fish. These fish should only be given to the most important cats.

All of your cats are special. But there are a select few of these who hold true power in your kitchen: these are the ones who are in charge of the main culinary facilities such as the one who stirs the soup pot, the one who makes juice, the one who cooks stir fry, etc. Focus on these cats most of all because they’re the ones leading the charge. If you have fish to spare, that’s when you feed the ones manning the ingredient stations.

With your cats nicely fed, perhaps it’s time to consider the best way you can earn your profit and that’s through laying out your kitchen.

8. Opt For An Efficient Layout

cats & soup layout
Smooth operations.

Every kitchen has a layout.

Even in real life — we all know where our stoves are, we know where our refrigerator is and where we keep our seasoning, etc. It’s this kind of setup that brings order and a flow of efficiency to our kitchen, especially when we prepare our meals. The same can be said for your kitchen here in Cats & Soup.

The way that the kitchen works in Cats & Soup, each cat has a job to do. Income is generated by the cooks and the ones helping them earn more are the cats that man (or is it cat?) the ingredient stations. The ingredient cats will run to the cook cats, empty their ingredient containers and run off to take a break at rest stations. These rest stations will generate recipe points after that.

From the very beginning of the game, your main cat will be the one stirring the soup pot. Keeping the other culinary facilities near it will help the flow of the ingredient cats coming to it. As the forest grows, it will take a bit more time for one cat to travel from their station to a cook cat’s station, and then to a rest facility then back to their station. Consider the ideas below for a seamless flow:

  • Keep the cook cats in the middle, the ingredient cats to one side, and the rest facilities on the other. They won’t take too long to reach their rest facilities of choice but there will be a delay when they need to go back to their own station.
  • Put the cook cats on one extreme side, rest facilities in the middle, and ingredient cats on the other side. As soon as the ingredient cats are done interacting with the cooks, they will rest and then immediately return to their work stations. Going to the cook cats will require a bit of time, though.

There are many ways you can do this, but settle for the one that works for you. Whatever you do, make sure that your facilities are not scattered. Not only will this somewhat slow down the production of your dishes, but it may also confuse you since you wouldn’t know which cat belongs where.

And in this confusion, you might even have a hard time spotting the special events.

9. Pay Attention To Special Events

While the game is running, you are bound to encounter special events.

These special events are quite important and only reward the most attentive of players. If the kitchen is left to idle, there’s no way you can get any of the prizes from these (unless they’re ones that don’t go away). Regardless, taking advantage of these when they pop up offer huge boons to your progress.

The following are examples of special events:

Photo Op

cats & soup photo op
Say cheese!

Smile for the camera! One of your cats will want to have a picture. Whether it’s for posterity or simply because they’re vain is unclear, but you will be paid a sum of money should you snap that camera. Just for fun, you may share it on social media, too, if you wish.

Hot Air Balloon

cats & soup hot air balloon
Up, up and away, my beautiful, my beautiful balloon…

After building the searchlight, you should experience this special event. Occasionally, a hot air balloon ridden by a mouse will fly over the kitchen. After tapping it repeatedly, the gold should scatter all over the kitchen and the mouse comes down with it. Thankfully (or regrettably, depending on how you see this), the mouse scampers away to safety.

Frog Prince

cats & soup hot prince
Slippery and slimy, but only on the outside.

Every now and then, a mysterious frog will appear in your kitchen. If you heed his special request, he will pay you a large sum of gold and sometimes recipe points. This is rewarded to you after watching an ad. Be warned that if you don’t catch him straight away, he will vanish!

We’ve covered a lot of things to do to keep your kitchen wealthy. But we have one last way for you to get rewarded.

10. Do Daily Missions, Achievements, And Collections

cats & soup dailies
Off to work we go!

Daily missions are like quests on a board. These give you something new to do every day and upon doing all of them, you are rewarded with gold. Occasionally, these pay you in gems. After completing all of your daily missions, you have to scratch the top of the board to get a random bonus prize. Usually, you’ll be given recipe points, but it’s best that you try it yourself!

cats & soup achievements
It’s a long, long road ahead of you and your cats.

Achievements on the other hand are feats that you complete as you play. These aren’t accomplished immediately, but once you do, you are paid in gems. This is one of the better ways to get rich. However, the secret to actually getting these gems is to not pay too much attention to the achievements. Your next dish sold might just be an achievement on its own. Look out for these.

cats & soup collections
One down and many left to go.

Lastly, you have the collections. For example, some cats are matched together in different groups and upon completing a group, you gain a permanent bonus. The same applies to furniture and equipment. This is much like what we discussed earlier about what you get from collecting fish.

Unlike fish, however, these are much more difficult to complete since cats come with new culinary facilities and those tend to be quite expensive. Furniture and equipment are randomized as well. As the cats seemingly come from the stars, aim for the stars yourself and maybe you might be swimming in gold or diamonds the next time you log in.

That’s a wrap for our Cats & Soup guide! Just remember that diligence and attention is key whenever you play this game. While it’s true that playing this game while you are preoccupied with something else is one way to play, attention rewards you with some interesting surprises. Meow get out there and make your kitchen purrfect!

Did we miss anything? Do you have some tips on running this feline kitchen better? Send your thoughts over in the comments section below!