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Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Become the Best Pet Rescue Team

Imagine finding a cat out in the busy street. You might say hi to it and even try to pet it. If they let you so much as pat their head, you get that warm, fuzzy feeling that’s even better than your first sip of morning coffee. Of course, after a while, you go along your merry way, only to find out that this furry feline is following you!

Do you take them home? Surely, you can’t ignore them. Just look at those large googly eyes! Can you really say no to that adorable purr? Try as you might, it’s difficult to shake off such a precious little furball when their negotiation skills involve mimicking the sound of a crying infant (just ask science). It’s kind of an unfair advantage against us helpless bipeds when we’re all hopelessly hotwired by nature to do everything to please a crying baby, especially one that’s furry and lovable.

idle pet shelter cover
A foster home full of fuzzy furballs.

But despite their seemingly irresistible charm, millions of stray cats, sadly, roam the streets all over the world. Some are lucky enough to be taken in by caring owners (also known as gullible human slaves to the erstwhile representation of ancient Egyptian deities) while others are sent to shelters so they can find a family who will adopt them.

The sad part about cats sent to shelters is that not all of them find a new home, and many are euthanized for a number of reasons such as overcrowding, injuries or ailments, aggressive behavior, and the like. Cats might have been regarded highly way back in ancient Egypt, won the heart of the internet, or had even held public office for 20 years (check out Stubbs the cat, the honorary mayor of an Alaskan town from 1997 to 2017), but the reality remains quite dire for poor felines who can’t find homes and families.

Though not all of us have the financial resources or emotional endurance to run a cat shelter in real life, we could still attempt this venture in the form of a game that can fulfill your desire to manage a cat shelter minus the very real challenges that come with running one.

idle pet shelter animal shelter

Enter Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue, a game released by OUTLOU:D GAMES in March 2022. As its name suggests, Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue lets you manage your very own cat shelter through an empire tycoon idle management setup wherein you’re tasked to rehabilitate cats, supervise volunteers, expand your shelter, improve quality-of-life facilities, and manage finances for your pawsome paradise.

The way Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue works is that you’re staffed with a handful of volunteers at your very own cat shelter. As a beginner, you’ll start at Happy Paw, a modest cat shelter in a quiet little town. Eventually, you’ll be able to unlock bigger shelters in a different location so suffice it that this guide will focus primarily on what you will encounter at Happy Paw.

In this modest little shelter, you begin with several facilities already present, such as the Hall, Bedroom, Playground, Canteen, WC (an abbreviation for water closet, or toilet), and many more. Some sections of the shelter, particularly those used by the cats, are assigned a volunteer who keeps the room clean and ready for the next feline friend who wants to use them.

idle pet shelter kitty
That’s a good lil’ kitty!

Each time a cat uses a facility, they accumulate points based on how much a particular room is upgraded to be comfortable. Comfort levels depend on the items you purchase for the room. For instance, your WC will begin with 1 litter box, which you can eventually upgrade and purchase more of once you have ample resources.

idle pet shelter litter
No sharing.

When using rooms, cats fill up a percentage meter directly related to that specific room. Further to the WC example, every time a cat uses a litter box, they get around, say, 30 points for their WC meter.

idle pet shelter apollo
A ray of sunshine, a bright-minded feline.

Once the bar reaches 100%, a cat will earn a heart, which will allow you to give them treats. The more treats you have to give, the higher their cost in terms of coins.

Every cat has a different number of hearts you need to fill. These hearts represent how much a cat needs to be rehabilitated in your shelter. Once a cat becomes fully rehabilitated wherein all their respective hearts are filled, they can be put up for adoption after you give them a treat.

idle pet shelter cat ready for adoption
Take care, Charlie!

The good news is that the game seems to be programmed to find adopters whose personalities fit those of the cat they want to take to their new home. You can view the personalities of both the adopter and the cat, and while these often match nicely with each other, you still have the option to refuse a potential adopter.

idle pet shelter adoption case
These two would get along juuuust fine.

Once an adopter becomes a new fur parent, you earn coins from their donation. 

Cats who enter your shelter are either strays you save from nearby, or those given by a pet rescue agency. Naturally, you can only accommodate a limited number of cats in your shelter, making shelter upgrades paramount if you want to rescue as many cats as you can.

idle pet shelter mittens
Mittens when we found them.

Therefore, managing finances, energy to run the shelter, the comfort of your facilities, and the efficiency of your staff are responsibilities you must handle with careful consideration. In the beginning of the game, you might feel a little overwhelmed despite the guidance of the tutorial stage as it can seem like there’s just too much information to handle in one go, particularly when it comes to upgrading your shelter. But fear not, this is what our beginner’s guide for Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue is for!

With our guide, we’ll help you navigate the best way to manage your finances, shelter and staff upgrades, energy allocation, expansion, and, most importantly, giving your furry felines the purrfect paradise—at least until they find a loving owner willing to take them in.

Are you ready to meowster—er, master running a cat shelter and avoid a cat-astrophe? Then let’s dive fur-ward into our guide for Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue!

Follow the Tasks on Post-Its

idle pet shelter tasks
Check out these radi-claw tasks!

We’ve mentioned that even with the tutorial, managing your shelter can get a little chaotic from the get-go. Sure, you’ll be told which functions to click, but there doesn’t seem to be some kind of clear pattern that you can follow when deciding what to do next for the shelter and the cats in it.

Which room should you upgrade next? Why are the shelter’s finances so low? Should I level up this volunteer or another? Which cat should I spend treats for? Why is Mr. Svenson so grumpy? These questions and many more can send you spiraling into a vortex of confusion that’s hard to pull yourself out of, especially if you make decisions for your shelter starting on the wrong foot.

This is where following the tasks from the post-it notes will come in handy. On the upper right-hand side of your screen, you’ll see a post-it icon that you can expand. This lists down all the tasks you can accomplish. At Happy Paw, you have a total of 47 tasks indicated on the post-it notes.

The thing with Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue is that every decision you make can affect other aspects of shelter management. This is why it’s of utmost importance to follow the tasks on the post-its as much as you can. Accomplishing tasks outlined by the post-its don’t only serve as a checklist, but these also yield important resources like coins, tokens, gems, and others. Following the tasks currently listed on the post-it notes is one of the most basic ways you can earn resources without having to watch too many ads (we’ll talk about this later).

idle pet shelter gameplay

However, you’ll eventually notice that some tasks that are on the post-it notes are of a seemingly higher level than you can afford with your current resources. Therefore, it’s best to prioritize the easiest or lowest level tasks you can accomplish. For instance, between battery upgrades and buying 2 pillows for the Bedroom, you’ll find that the latter costs less so do that first. Once you’ve accomplished this task, you’ll be given a Card Box (more on this later) with rewards inside.

Finishing as many of the easy tasks as you can also opens up other tasks as the game doesn’t allow you to view the entire list of tasks from the post-it notes. When all of the available tasks seem to be beyond your current resource capacity to accomplish, you may either focus on improving the speed and efficiency of volunteers, or upgrade cats so they can be put up for adoption, which is also an important goal of the game.

Prioritize Cats for Adoption

idle pet shelter cats in rehabilitation
Turn them into the purr-fect partner.

Once you decide to take a cat into your shelter, you’re responsible for their rehabilitation. This means that some cats may only need as little as 3 hearts to be leveled up, while others have as many as 10 hearts before they can be put up for adoption. As it is in real life, you can’t tell cats what to do, meaning you can’t manually control their actions in the game. They’re going to eat, play, sleep, and do their business at their own pace, which usually takes a few seconds as represented by a dial that fills up whenever they choose to perform an activity.

As mentioned earlier in this guide, once all their rehabilitation meters reach 100%, you can give them a treat and they’ll level up 1 heart. The higher their heart level, the higher the cost of their treats. Once all the hearts have been leveled up, you can give them a final treat and put them up for adoption.

Since all cats move at their own pace and need different levels of rehabilitation, you’ll find that some cats will stay longer in your shelter while others will find a new home as quickly as they came in. In the management sense, you must understand that keeping cats costs coins as the more cats in your shelter, the more you need to upgrade facilities to simultaneously accommodate multiple cats wanting to use the same room.

idle pet shelter canteen

For instance, if you have as many as 10 cats in your shelter, the Bedroom can’t just have 1 bed or the Canteen can’t just have 2 food bowls. This is because each cat will wait for their other feline friends to finish using a bed or eating from a food bowl before they can use it themselves. They will also wait for a volunteer to clean up “dirty” items before using them.

With the lack of appropriate equipment and facilities, cats are bound to stay much, much longer in the shelter as filling up their rehabilitation meters will prove to be quite slow. Additionally, you’re only allowed to keep a limited number of cats depending on your shelter’s current capacity.

So how do you manage a scenario where there are multiple cats in the shelter? Aside from making upgrades for creature comfort, you need to make it your goal to prioritize spending for treats for cats that are close to hitting the adoption stage of their journey.

Now this doesn’t mean you’re going to ignore other cats who aren’t on their last or second to the last heart level. This only means that the first ones you should allocate available resources to are those nearing the adoption stage. When you have coins to spare, by all means give treats to other cats whose hearts need to be leveled up but might be a long way to go from being completely rehabilitated and, thus, adopted.

idle pet shelter adoption pass

As much as you might feel tempted to hoard all these cute little munchkins in your shelter, keep in mind that your objective is to find these cats a loving home with a caring owner. Don’t worry about a cat leaving your shelter to get adopted—there are many, many more cats who will need your shelter to care for them.

In fact, if you don’t prioritize cats who can be put up for adoption, you won’t just lose much-needed donations from potential adopters, but the game won’t let you take in other cats beyond your shelter’s max capacity, whether that’s from the animal rescue agency or through rescuing cats who may be stuck on trees or, worse, on top of a log floating down the river. Cats who cannot be taken into your shelter will leave or disappear after a short duration.

That said, get used to not being able to take in every cat that you come across. This can be somewhat upsetting, especially if you’re gung-ho about rescuing cats stuck helplessly on floating river logs. But you can definitely avoid these instances when you make room for new cat friends who need your help by finding loving companions for cats who are ready to be adopted.

Boost Your Volunteers

idle pet shelter volunteer
Why the long face, Mr. Svenson?

Dedicated volunteers are the lifeblood of your shelter. At Happy Paw, you start with 5 volunteers as part of the staff. Once you unlock other shelters by completing all the 47 tasks at Happy Paw, you’ll get to meet new volunteers for that new shelter. The good news is that volunteers who’ve helped you previously will continue to help you manage bigger, succeeding shelters, as well as keep their current levels and stats.

At Happy Paw, these are the quirky but lovable volunteers taking care of the cats:

idle pet shelter volunteers profile
Paw-some meow-sters of your feline home.

As you can see, each volunteer also has backstories you can unlock by upgrading them. Of course, upgrades aren’t only to unlock these tidbits of interesting information. They’re also essential in making volunteers more efficient by increasing their Speed of Work stat. With their speed stat boosted, volunteers can clean rooms faster and prepare items like toys, beds, food bowls, rugs, etc. for the next cats who wants to use them. Each room has a total cleaning time depending on their overall level and upgrades.

For instance, a Level 3 Hall with all item upgrades maxed out has a total cleaning time of 8 seconds per carpet. At Level 6, Rob Svenson, the volunteer assigned to the Hall, will have a Work of Speed of 2. This means that it will take him 4 seconds at his current level to clean 1 dirty carpet.

By improving the efficiency of volunteers, you also cut down the time cats have to wait to use a facility, thus speeding up their rehabilitation. 

However, unlike the cats who get points for using facilities, volunteers do not get experience points merely by working. To upgrade volunteers, you need card points, which can be obtained by opening Card Boxes, as well as acquiring tokens. Where do these Card Boxes and tokens come from? Why, from completing post-it tasks, of course!

idle pet shelter card box
A box not filled with litter!

This circles us back to the importance of completing tasks outlined in the post-it notes. Not following these tasks as much as you can will result in a lack of both Card Points and tokens. If volunteers don’t move fast, the rehabilitation progress of cats will also slow down.

If cats don’t get adopted, you get less coins via donations, ultimately affecting your shelter’s overall finances, thus making it difficult to upgrade facilities and items. It’s kind of a cyclical, snowball effect, so take care of your volunteers by giving them a boost so they can take care of the shelter and the cats as best as they can!

Understanding Shelter Upgrades

idle pet shelter playground
Keep the critters from being cat-atonic.

Shelter upgrades are perhaps the most complicated and somewhat confusing part of the game—at least in the beginning. They’re also really costly in the long run in terms of both resources and waiting times. Naturally, the higher the upgrade, the higher the cost and the longer the time you have to wait until they finish.

Upgrades can be found in the lower right-hand side of the screen via an icon that looks like a stack of papers (you have to expand the icon that looks like a blue binder, which is found in the same location). These are separated into 3 tabs: Construction, Research, and Statistics.

As you’ll quickly discover, the first 2 tabs are all about paying for and waiting for upgrades, while the Statistics tab provides a summary of the important figures in your shelter, particularly your coin resources.

idle pet shelter energy

For the most part, you’ll be following upgrades and purchases indicated as tasks from the post-it notes. But as we mentioned earlier, some tasks might be too expensive or are lacking requirements to be completed. The sensible thing to do, in this case, is to pay for upgrades that cost the least.

However, upgrades from the Construction and Research tabs are tied to each other so it can get a little confusing which one to prioritize first so as to fully maximize your available coins. Before diving into upgrades, it’s best to understand what’s in your shelter first and how each room functions.

To make it a little easier, we’ve classified rooms into 2 types based on how they’re used. These are:

  • Cat Rooms: As the name implies, these are rooms used by cats. Each of these rooms are assigned 1 volunteer to keep the room clean and ready for all the cats who want to use them. As there are 5 volunteers, there are also a total of 5 Cat Rooms at Happy Paw.

    These will increase in number once you manage to unlock succeeding shelters. The 5 main Cat Rooms include the Hall, Canteen, Bedroom, Playground, and WC. Each of these rooms has individual items you can purchase and upgrade to improve creature comforts. The more improvements made, the higher the points the cats can get from using a particular facility.
  • Resource Rooms: These rooms are not used by cats so they don’t have volunteers to manage them. Instead, this is where administrative decisions are made, such as energy allocation, finance management, and Research completion.

    There are 4 Resource Rooms at each shelter, with the difference being their total capacity to hold resources like coins (Vault) and energy (Energy room), the number of Research upgrades available (Office), or the number of items that can be purchased to improve the shelter’s exterior appearance (Exterior).

Further to upgrades, let’s take a look at the 3 tabs directly related to upgrading your shelter.

Construction

idle pet shelter construction
An improved bedroom? Turn this paws-sibility into a reality!

This tab focuses on the overall level of an individual room. Leveling up rooms requires coins, fulfilling a waiting time, and certifications and licenses, which you can get through the Research tab (more on this in the next subsection).

Excluding the Office and the Vault, each room can have a variety of items that require being purchased and upgraded. Some items may or may not require energy to be purchased (more about energy later). Additionally, you won’t be able to purchase or upgrade some items unless a room has reached a specific level. For instance, if you want to get Level 4 cat beds in the Bedroom, the Bedroom must be at Level 3.

Keep in mind that you can only accomplish Construction upgrades one at a time.

Research

idle pet shelter research
A fur-midable collection of documents—behold!

This tab focuses on the licenses and certifications you need to level up rooms in the Construction tab. Like Construction upgrades, Research upgrades will require coins and fulfilling a waiting time. You can only research one at a time unless you purchase Shredder the cat from the Store, which gives you 1 additional paperwork slot. The good news is that fulfilling Research doesn’t require energy. Basically, Research upgrades supplement the points and perks you can gain from Construction upgrades.

Office and Energy rooms don’t require Research upgrades and are purely confined to Construction upgrades. The Office, in particular, is directly tied to the Research upgrades you accomplish. This means that the Office’s percentage completion depends on how much Research documents you’ve accomplished. If you’re going to compare the Office to one of the Cat Rooms, Research documents are the “items” inside the Office.

Statistics

idle pet shelter statistics
A brief overview of your not-so-in-fur-ior workforce.

This tab serves merely as a summary of your coin resources, as well as a record of how many cats you’ve managed to put up for adoption and the number of cats currently residing in your shelter.

As you can see from the image above, the Managers Income and VIP Donations segments are marked as “inactive.” VIP Donations can only be marked active when you boost the shelter’s income. You can do this by clicking on the blue box with a red play button at the bottom of the screen. Boosting the shelter’s income this way will require you to watch 1 ad, which will boost the shelter’s income by 50% for 15 minutes, with a max boost time of 2 hours before you can access this option again.

As for the Managers Income, this will only be marked as active when you purchase managers from the Shop. Of course, this requires real money so this is entirely up to your discretion. We recommend activating the VIP Donations instead as it only asks you to watch ads.

Making the Right Shelter Upgrades

idle pet shelter research complete
An upgraded shelter will go down in hiss-tory!

Now that you have an idea of how each room functions and what the 3 upgrade tabs are for, how do you make the right upgrade decisions?

  • In general, try to prioritize Construction upgrades over Research upgrades. This is because once you complete all Construction upgrades and have maxed out all the room levels, you’ll be able to unlock a new shelter. However, keep in mind that once you unlock a new shelter, you won’t be able to go back to the previous one.

    Unlocking a new shelter also means that everything will reset to Level 1, with the exception of the volunteers, who will keep their current levels. Cats who have not been put up for adoption in the previous shelter will also no longer be available when you access the Cats tab. Basically, it’ll be like starting the game all over again, except you have a more experienced set of volunteers to help you alongside new volunteers you’ll meet in the new shelter.
  • That being said, only accomplish Research upgrades as needed, particularly for Cat Rooms. If you’re a completionist, you might be tempted to upgrade all Research enhancements but this won’t be necessary. Instead, simply unlock all the main Research upgrades (the first one for each room) until you’ve unlocked all succeeding upgrades. Then, accomplish only Research upgrades when leveling up a room via Construction requires it.
  • On the other hand, there are a few Research upgrades worth investing in. We recommend upgrading these documents up to at least Level 1:
    • Shelter Journal (Hall): Upgrading this will let you take in more cats in the shelter. This is one Research segment you should heavily invest in since getting as many cats sheltered and adopted will help increase adopter donations.
    • Caretaking Guidelines: This is available for all Cat Rooms. What this does is allow any cat a chance to get additional points for using a room. For instance, if a cat can acquire a maximum of 400 points by using the hall carpet, getting the Hall’s Caretaking Guidelines to Level 1 will let any cat gain 440 points with its 10% increase. Take note that this happens at random.
    • Landscaping Guidelines (Exterior): This improves income generation from having great curb appeal, supplementing the total income the Exterior can provide. This can also be tracked via the Environment Income in the Statistics tab.
    • All Vault Research Upgrades: This is pretty self-explanatory—you can’t have enough coins in your safe! Additionally, Vault upgrades via the Construction tab can cost a pretty penny so paying for the Research upgrades may be a cheaper alternative until you can afford the Construction upgrades.
  • The Canteen is one of the easiest rooms to upgrade via the Construction tab so you can choose to prioritize this over other Cat Rooms.
  • Among all the Resource Rooms, the Energy room is the most important so try to max out all the Construction upgrades for it as soon as possible. This is because Construction upgrades and item purchases often consume a small amount of energy depending on their level. Your shelter is allotted a fixed amount of energy that can accommodate all upgrades necessary so getting this out of the way will certainly lessen your waiting time in maxing out other rooms.
  • Upgrading your Exterior early and purchasing as many items as you can will also help generate passive income that can supplement donations.

As you may have guessed, upgrades can surely siphon your finances, but, fortunately, there are a few other ways your shelter can make bank aside from those we’ve already mentioned.

Claim Daily Rewards

idle pet shelter daily reward
Mew bonuses every day!

With the most complicated part of the game out of the way, consider this section as a quick breather! As you can tell from the header, one of the easiest ways you can earn extra rewards is by logging in every day. The best part is you can already see what kind of rewards you’ll be getting each day you login to claim them. This can range from coins to tokens, gems, and even card points to help level up volunteers.

As the manager of a shelter, it’s your duty to check on your cats and staff every day so make the most of it by claiming your daily rewards!

Watch Ads for Bonus Rewards

As with most mobile games in the market, ads are also present in Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue. In fact, you might find yourself compelled to watch more ads than you’d like not because they’re forced, but because they give off pretty good rewards that are necessary for your shelter to complete upgrades and make your cats happy.

Let’s take a look at some of the rewards you can get every time you watch ads:

idle pet shelter donation
  • Receiving donations: Whenever an icon of coins, gems, or tokens appears on the right-hand side of the screen, this means you have the choice to watch an ad to claim the rewards indicated. This is referred to by the game as graciously receiving donations. You can click on the icon that has appeared and see if the amount of coins, gems, or tokens are worth watching a 30-second ad for. Usually, you’ll see more of this for coins since this is the most basic currency.

    Only rarely will you get the chance to watch an ad for gems and tokens so while you may refuse to watch ads for coins (as there are other ways to get them), you might want to consider watching the ads at least for gems and tokens. You may increase your chance of receiving more gem donations if you level up a Vault upgrade related to this in the Research tab.
idle pet shelter shelter full
  • Taking in more cats: Even though your shelter is full, the animal rescue agency will continue to arrive with a cat basket, and other cats within the vicinity of your shelter will still need rescuing. The problem is, your shelter can only take in so many. Once you’ve reached the maximum number of cats that your shelter can accommodate, you may take in around 2-3 more cats beyond that number provided you watch an ad every time to choose to shelter a cat.

    However, if you take in too many, the game will require you to expand the shelter via the Shelter Journal upgrades from the Research tab. Of course, this will take a while so the cat in question will end up disappearing after a minute or so.
idle pet shelter shelter income
  • Boosting shelter income: We’ve mentioned earlier in this guide that you can boost your shelter’s income by 50% for 15 minutes (for a total of 2 hours) every time you watch an ad upon clicking the blue box with the red play button. Availing this option will activate the VIP Donations in the Statistics tab. When the boost expires, VIP Donations will be marked inactive.
idle pet shelter double coins
  • Double coins earned offline: Though you might take a break from playing the game, the shelter won’t stop functioning as it should. That said, it will continue to earn coins from donations while you’re not logged in. When you return to the game, you have the option to double your earnings by watching an ad. Usually, earnings garnered offline are pretty substantial so this is one ad you might not want to pass off.
idle pet shelter upgrade speed up
  • Speed up upgrades: Similar to other games, the higher the upgrades you want, the more time and resources you have to spend. The same applies to Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue: whenever you spend for upgrades, the more coins you have to spend and the longer the waiting times you have to fulfill.

    The good news is that you may occasionally be offered an ad watch to lessen the waiting time of completing upgrades for several minutes each ad. You may increase the speedup time but it’s quite tricky as you need to immediately click the speedup right after you click the upgrade.

    For example, for 1 second, a 20-minute speedup option will appear but you have to be extremely fast in clicking it, otherwise it will display only a 15-minute speedup. Of course, you may pay for speedups using gems, but, again, these are harder to earn than coins so watching ads are a sufficient compromise.
idle pet shelter lucky wheel
  • Extra spins for the Lucky Wheel: Similar to the daily login rewards, you can also spin a Lucky Wheel every day. However, you only get 1 free spin, but you can get 5 extra spins if you watch an ad each time you spin. Once you’ve used up all the 5 extra spins, you need to wait a couple of hours for the extra spins to refresh.
idle pet shelter ad
  • Costumes: Aside from all the rewards listed above, one other thing you’ll get from watching ads are costumes! Yes, you can play dress up with your cats and let these adorable creatures look even more charming with a sundry of outfits. If you watch an ad for any of the rewards stated above, you may collect a new costume provided you watch enough ads.

    For instance, if you watch 20 ads to accept coin donations, you may get a costume. The best part is that if you collect all the costumes for a certain theme, you can open a reward box! You can check out the costumes you’ve acquired in the wardrobe tab. Most of the costumes you can gain from watching ads are part of the Watchers Collection.

Have Fun with Events

Managing a shelter is just one part of the game—there are fun events you can join as well! Ongoing events during our playthrough include the Cat Cafe and the Costume Party, both of which have a different set of rules, perks, and rewards.

Cat Café

idle pet shelter cat cafe event
Paw-don us, good sir.

The Cat Café event has some similarities with shelter management as you generally have to manage a café with different rooms and staff members assigned to certain tasks. Café management entails purchasing items that will improve the café’s ambience, as well as interactions between the visitors and the cats.

Similar to real-life cafés, visitors will only stay a limited time and your goal is to get them to leave fully satisfied by fulfilling all their wishes. Wishes between visitors can vary, from having dessert to petting a number of cats, photographing cats by the fountain, relaxing in a hammock, and many more.

Thus, all your café’s improvements need to be geared toward fulfilling all your visitors’ wishes. As visitors interact with cats, they leave donations, as well as Like Tokens that you can use to further improve the café.

We recommend spending first for the smaller items to improve the café before building any of the extra rooms, which can cost beyond 10,000 coins. Similarly, upgrades that can increase both the number of cats and visitors who can be in the café should be prioritized.

Costume Party

idle pet shelter costume party event
Who will have the best claw-stume?

Playing dress up with cats isn’t just confined to them looking cool in the shelter—they can participate in costume parties, too! At the Costume Party event, cats can dress up according to 3 themes randomly generated by the game.

If you happen to have a costume that is aligned with the theme, you can dress up any cat to participate in the party so they can get tons of rewards, not the least of which are coins for your shelter. The more they party, the more they can earn and boost your income. Be sure to pick cats who have the most hearts as they can get more points while partying. Additionally, adopting more cats will let you earn more party tickets for the event.

Keep in mind that these events only last for a limited time, such as a couple of hours or days depending on when you’ve caught them. An event may or may not repeat, and new events can come up depending on the season. That said, take advantage of these limited-time events not only for extra income but so your cats can further enjoy their stay at your shelter! In addition, some costumes you can collect are exclusive to events.

Take Breaks!

idle pet shelter cat
They’ll always be there!

As you can see, managing a shelter can be hard work! That said, taking breaks is also important. In fact, stepping away from the game for a short while is one of the easiest ways you can earn more coins as every time you login to the game after a break, you’re offered the chance to watch an ad to double your earnings.

Coin rewards earned through this method can be large enough to accomplish more costly upgrades, especially when you’re set to level up rooms via Construction enhancements. If you’ve accomplished Vault upgrades, you get to keep more coins to further improve the shelter. Patience goes a long way so take a break whenever you need to!

With this, we conclude our beginner’s guide for Idle Pet Shelter – Cat Rescue! Hopefully, with these tips, you’re able to:

  • Better manage resource allocation to maximize upgrades that won’t just improve quality-of-life enhancements, but also keep the shelter well-stocked with enough coins and energy to keep it running in tip-top shape.
  • Accomplish tasks from the post-it notes as much as you can so you can level up rooms, earn more rewards, and upgrade volunteers continuously so they can become more efficient.
  • Take advantage of limited-time events to boost income and obtain rewards that may be exclusive to these events.
  • Decide which rooms to prioritize in terms of leveling up without wasting precious time and resources.
  • Improve rooms that will also help earn passive income to supplement what the shelter earns as base income and donations from adopters.
  • Accommodate more cats who need to be rescued. You know what they say—the more the merrier!
  • Rehabilitate as many cats as you can so they can get their health back up and finally find loving owners who are willing to take care of them!

Are there other tips and tricks you’d like to share with fellow shelter managers? Who’s your favorite volunteer? Which costume is the cutest? Have you ever found out why Mr. Svenson is so grumpy? Feel free to share your thoughts in our comment box below!