Wouldn’t it be nice to get away from the city and just go somewhere peaceful and quiet? Somewhere you can simply kick back, relax, and be one with nature? And, if you’re a cat-lover, what’s better than to live in an idyllic place where you can while away the days with your feline friends?
Just imagine hiding in a forest where you have a nice cozy house that you can share with your cat companions. Here, nature provides you and your fuzzy visitors all you need: a steady supply of fish from a nearby river, wood from a tree that never runs out—you’d even find a gift box floating down the river from time to time. In this forest, your sole mission is to appreciate nature and provide a place where cats can come and go to rest after play, and eat to their heart’s content.
What’s this forest called, you might ask?
It’s Secret Cat Forest, of course!
Released in November 2020 by IDEASAM, Secret Cat Forest is a casual game that’s meant to be enjoyed in the same way as a good glass of wine: slowly and while you’re in the mood to relax. It’s far from being the type of game that will awaken your competitive side or get your heart pumping with high-octane action. In fact, if you let the game idle and just keep listening to the background music, you might find yourself drifting off into a nap!
Gameplay-wise, Secret Cat Forest is rather simple: you fish, collect wood, make furniture, and wait for cats to visit your house. The more frequent cats visit, the more your intimacy levels with them grow. Intimacy levels are indicated by the Paw Stamps you acquire with each cat’s visit. Every cat has its own maximum intimacy levels, meaning some cats will visit you twice and you’ll be instant friends, while others will take a while to warm up to you.
Once you max out these intimacy levels by acquiring a number of Paw Stamps for a specific cat, you get rewarded with adorable GIFs and picture collections. GIF Albums feature individual GIFs for each cat, while the Special Album features group photos that can be unlocked once all the cats included in that photo have become friends with you.
The goal of the game, therefore, is to get all the cats in the forest to visit your home. But since cats are free spirits by nature, they won’t just visit your house and make friends with you just like that. You need to attract them with food, furniture, and other items that will make their visit a comfortable one. This means furnishing your house with stuff that they like.
The challenge here is that each cat has their own personality and they’ll only come by if your home has a specific furniture or item they prefer. While some cats can choose to visit any time of the day, others may prefer to drop by during either daytime or nighttime. The time of day in the forest is determined by your phone’s clock settings.
If you scroll to the right from your home, you can access the Kitty Archive, which contains information about every cat in the forest. The caveat is that some of these details are blank spaces you need to unlock.
Whenever cats visit, they’ll consume 20 of the fish you’ve caught from the river. You can easily replenish your supply by going fishing anytime. You can only collect a certain amount of fish but you can upgrade your storage capacity so you’d have more fish to share when more of your furry friends drop by. You can have as many as five (or more) of your furry friends hanging out in your home at once so having a full stock of fish is always a good idea.
Now, when it comes to making furniture cats like, you can check out the items you can make from an in-game menu.
All furniture items cost wood to make, which you can gather from the Infinity Tree next to your fishing spot. Swiping right from the home screen will let you access the part of the forest with the river and Infinity Tree.
Some furniture items will require other materials such as Assembly Parts, thread, yarn, duck tape (yes, it’s called duck tape and not duct tape), and others. Assembly Parts can be acquired by fishing while other materials can be collected by opening Kitty’s Gift, which you’ll get at random.
On the whole, Secret Cat Forest can seem pretty straightforward in terms of gameplay but it’s actually a little bit tricky if you don’t know how exactly to progress. Eventually, you may be wondering, “Why are all the same cats visiting me? Where are all the other cats and how do I make friends with them?”
This is where our guide for Secret Cat Forest comes in! We’re here to help you get acquainted and make friends with all the cats in the forest, as well as offer tips on how you can best maximize your wood supply, fill in the blanks in the Kitty Archive, and furnish your house with the right furniture and items to get your feline friends to hang out and have a memorable stay!
Keep Fishing for Materials
Because Secret Cat Forest is a game that fosters relaxation, what better way to spend it than by fishing next to a clear and sparkly river? And believe us, you’ll be doing a lot of fishing if you want to actively progress in the game.
As mentioned, this part of the forest has the majestic Infinity Tree, which provides you with wood that you can harvest by clicking on the tree, and below it is the river. To the right is a wooden fishing rod. Clicking on the fishing rod will lower the hook into the river and you can begin to collect fish. To collect fish, you have to long press on the individual fish themselves and let go when the needle points anywhere inside the red portion of the meter.
Don’t worry about missing your mark as the fish won’t disappear. You just have to try again until you’re able to get the fish.
As stated earlier in this guide, you can only collect a certain amount of fish before your storage limit hits maximum capacity. You may continuously upgrade the max storage limit for fish provided you have enough wood for it (more on upgrades later).
Occasionally, you’ll notice that aside from collecting fish, you’ll also be able to collect other items along with the fish, primarily Assembly Parts and Kitty Archive Shards. Assembly Parts are represented by nuts and bolts, while Kitty Archive Shards look like little string bags with the word “Cat” on them. Both of these are important materials: Assembly Parts may be required to craft certain furniture items, while Kitty Archive Shards are used to fill in the blank spaces in each cat’s profile in the archive tab. Filling out the blank spaces in a cat’s profile provides you with clues as to their preferred visiting times, as well as the kind of furniture or items that will entice them to visit your home.
Each individual blank space will require a specific number of Kitty Archive Shards to be filled. Four shards is the minimum, and the cost will eventually go higher. You can choose whose profile you want to complete, but keep in mind that blank spaces will be filled in order of their appearance in that specific profile.
That said, if you want to fill in all the blank spaces and find out what will bring cats to your home, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time fishing for those Kitty Archive Shards. Reaching the maximum storage capacity for fish won’t let you collect any more fish to include in your supply, but you can still keep fishing for materials. Since you’ll also be getting some Assembly Parts along with Kitty Archive Shards, fishing can be an active way to play aside from collecting wood from the Infinity Tree.
More fish will come up to the surface of the river if you wait a short while, at which point you can continue fishing. Keep in mind, however, that Assembly Parts and Kitty Archive Shards can be collected at random. This means some fish might come with extra materials and others will not. From time to time, you’ll also see a golden fish, which will give you canned fish when you manage to catch it.
To increase your chances of acquiring materials whenever you go fishing, make an effort to upgrade your fishing rod.
Be Wise with Upgrades
Speaking of upgrades, these are necessary to increase your chances of gathering materials, as well as speed up some activities in the game. We can’t emphasize enough how progress can be rather slow, which is pretty unsurprising for a game that’s meant to be relaxing. But for those who can’t wait to get acquainted with all the cats and scratch their completionist itch, upgrades can certainly speed things up a bit.
There are 4 available upgrades in the game, all of which can be accessed through the upgrades menu, which is symbolized by a star with an arrow pointing upward. Pictured below are the 4 upgrades you can take advantage of and their initial cost in materials:
Now this is one of the tricky parts of the game: at the onset, you might think that the cost to upgrade isn’t so high—that is, until you realize that resource-gathering is slow and getting the exact item you want won’t always happen. For instance, leveling up your fish storage will only require 300 wood in the beginning. This initial upgrade will add 50 more fish to your storage limit. The problem is that the Infinity Tree can be a bit slow in producing wood and between this upgrade and making furniture, the latter tends to take priority. If you do manage to upgrade your fish storage, the succeeding upgrade requirements will be exceedingly high.
Still, upgrades are important if you want progression to happen at a faster pace. The key is to know which upgrades to prioritize first. Of course, your luck when it comes to acquiring materials can play a part in determining which upgrades will be available to you at a certain time. Regardless, here are our tips when you want to be wise with upgrades:
- Invest in Infinity Tree upgrades first. As you will discover rather quickly, wood is basically the primary “currency” for almost everything, including both upgrades and crafting furniture. Fortunately, the initial upgrade costs for the Infinity Tree are a small number of Supplements (represented by a flask containing green liquid). Supplements can be gained by opening Kitty’s Gift boxes. Though Kitty’s Gift gives random items as well as wood, Supplements tend to appear more frequently compared to other materials such as Thread, Yarn, Umbrella Parts, etc.
Naturally, the cost will get higher the more you upgrade, but since wood is a crucial material, make an effort to upgrade the Infinity Tree whenever you can. In this stage of the game, Supplements are solely dedicated to upgrading the Infinity Tree anyway so you won’t have to split the resource with something else. - Upgrade the workbench once. This will cost 500 wood, which you can say is a bit expensive, but it will allow you to craft 2 items at once. The next upgrade comes at an exorbitant 1,500 wood, which will allow you to craft 3 items at once. As tempting as it might be to upgrade the workbench as many times as you can afford, this isn’t really necessary. If you haven’t been upgrading the Infinity Tree, there’s really no point in upgrading your workbench twice or thrice when you might not be able to afford the cost of crafting multiple furniture items anyway.
And even if you have been upgrading the Infinity Tree, you might not be able to make use of the extra workbench anyway since earning wood still won’t be as fast and it’s more than likely that 1 furniture item would have already been crafted by the time you’ve earned enough wood to start crafting another. - Upgrade the fish storage later. To be more specific, only upgrade the fish storage when you’ve been consistently visited by 5 or more cats all at once. As mentioned, each cat consumes 20 fish from your supply so to really maximize this upgrade, you need lots of cats to visit you at one time or else you’ll be left with a surplus of fish that can easily be replenished with a quick trip down the river.
Of course, getting multiple cats to visit you means continuously furnishing your house with furniture that will attract multiple cats and not just the same ones. That said, instead of spending wood to upgrade the fish storage, you can put this off for later and invest wood for crafting different furniture items. - Upgrade the fishing rod when you can finally afford it. Admittedly, the fishing rod takes the longest time to upgrade as it requires Fishing Reels. This item doesn’t seem to be as common as, say, Supplements whenever you open Kitty’s Gift. It will take a while to collect the required Fishing Reels for an upgrade, but when you do manage to gather them all, don’t hesitate to upgrade the fishing rod as doing so will increase your chances of collecting Assembly Parts and Kitty Archive Shards whenever you go fishing.
There’s one more item in the upgrades menu and that’s the Special Craft option.
Crafting a special item requires Whiskers, which you can only collect after the 7th day of claiming your Attendance Rewards (more on this later). Until such time, you won’t be able to really make use of this feature. Through the Special Craft option, you may exchange Whiskers for wood, or craft items not included in the furniture menu such as a Tropical Chime, Moon Shard, Rainbow Shard, Toy Duck, and so on. The rarer the item, the more Whiskers are required.
Watch Ads for Bonuses
Like most, if not all, mobile games, Secret Cat Forest also gives you bonuses whenever you watch ads. There are 3 bonuses you can avail of, which are pictured below:
In the case of the fishing pot bonus, the number of canned fish you’ll get after watching an ad will depend on the current level of your fishing rod.
The good thing about these ads is that they’re completely optional and the first two bonuses have an interval of 1 hour each before you can watch another ad. Additionally, you can choose to continuously watch the ads for boosting wood collection every 2 minutes, but that really isn’t necessary unless you’re close to gathering the wood requirement for a particular furniture item or upgrade.
On the whole, you can watch these ads anytime then return to the game an hour later to fish, collect wood, or craft furniture. By then, you can watch another ad and let the game idle.
Approaching Furniture Crafting
Aside from gathering wood and fishing, crafting furniture is another significant part of Secret Cat Forest. There are tons of adorable, eye-catching furniture items you can craft and these can be accessed in the furniture menu, which is represented by a couch symbol. Each furniture type has 4 variants, with the exception of items such as the Warm Stove, Floors, and the Long Ladder.
For example, rug-type furniture items can either be the Red Rug, Diamond Rug, Fish Rug, or Kitty Rug. You can easily switch between variants by simply clicking on the image of the item. Press the check symbol on the right to use your preferred variant. If you don’t have a particular variant, click the hammer symbol to craft it if you have enough resources.
The further you scroll down, the more these furniture items become expensive. Some require just a couple of hundred wood while others will need wood numbering in the thousands. Some variants are also more expensive than others.
More furniture items will be available once you’re able to unlock other areas of the house. For instance, if you craft a Long Ladder, this will give you access to the 2nd floor, which will let you craft furniture items specifically exclusive to that room. Once you’ve unlocked the 2nd floor, you can unlock a secret area when you craft the Golden Cushion, and so on. Currently, there are about 4 areas of the house you can unlock, including the 2nd floor. Each area has their own unlock requirements.
With the myriad of furniture items you can choose from and with the way wood can be a little bit slow to gather, which ones should you craft first?
This is a bit tricky to answer as there are actually quite a few things you need to consider when crafting furniture, and we don’t just mean wood allocation. In the beginning, you might get tempted to craft every furniture variant for each type of furniture item, but don’t fall into this trap as this can be extremely counterproductive if you want to maximize your wood allocation while attracting as many cats to your house as possible. Crafting every furniture variant may please the completionist or interior designer in you, but you can save this activity for later.
One other thing about crafting furniture is that some types and variants take much, much longer to make than others. Usually, the more expensive they are, the more time it takes to complete their crafting process. Some even take more than 24 hours to craft. This is where having at least 1 extra workbench can come in handy.
You can approach furniture crafting in a handful of ways that can maximize both your available wood resources as well as your time. Below are a few tips for your consideration:
Craft Furniture Based on Cost
Proper wood allocation is imperative so you may approach crafting based on the cost of furniture items. Assuming you have 2 workbenches, you can try to split your wood resources in these ways:
- Make an expensive furniture item and a cheaper one. You can craft the same type of furniture with different variants, or craft 2 different types of furniture. The latter is more recommended as you’re likely to attract more than just 1 cat if you have different furniture items instead of the same one with another appearance.
This way, you can save time crafting as the cheaper item will likely be completed faster than the expensive one. While crafting both, you can gather wood from the Infinity Tree and prepare for another round of crafting once 1 item is finished. With this method, you may be able to craft multiple cheaper furniture items while also having at least 1 expensive item covered. - Make 2 expensive furniture items: This can be a little difficult to do but it’s not impossible if you save enough wood and Assembly Parts, which are typically required when crafting expensive furniture items. Though admittedly more expensive and time-consuming, this method might actually save you time and resources in the long run. Think of it this way: if you manage to get some of the expensive stuff out of the way now, you’ll be able to finish crafting multiple cheaper items later at a faster pace.
- Make 2 cheap furniture items: This is, of course, easier to accomplish than the previous approach, but the convenience this offers can feel short-lived since furniture items eventually increase in cost. However, this can still be a productive approach if you want to complete at least the first Furniture Collection set, which we’ll discuss in the next section.
Complete Furniture Collection Sets
If you swipe left from the home screen, you’ll be able to access the Kitty Archive. This is divided into 4 tabs, including the Profile tab, GIF Album, Special Album, and Furniture Collection tab. In the Furniture Collection tab, you’ll see furniture sets that, when completed, will yield a bonus such as additional wood and reduced craft times.
Basically, if you craft all the furniture items included in a particular set, you’ll be rewarded with the bonus tied to that set. For instance, in the first set, you’ll be able to claim an instant 1,000 wood after crafting a Red Rug, Diamond Rug, Polar Bear House, Kitty Tent, Mustard Hammock, Wasabi Hammock, Stitch Mat, and Bearpaw Mat.
As you may have noticed, some of the furniture items here are of the same type, which, as we mentioned, may be a counterproductive crafting method when you want to attract more cat visitors. However, the bonuses will come in handy so if you’re thinking of making different variants of the same furniture type, check the Furniture Collection tab first to know which ones to prioritize. We recommend trying to complete furniture sets that give wood bonuses first, then work your way towards completing sets that offer reduced craft times later.
Craft Specific Furniture
Cats, as we stated earlier, have their own personalities and certain types of furniture will entice them to visit. However, you can only discover clues about what type of furniture items will attract cats once you fill in the blanks in their profile using Kitty Archive Shards. Moreover, some of these clues are just that—clues. This means that even if you do fill in the blanks, not all of them will yield specific information about what a particular cat wants. You still have to decipher the information you’ve unlocked.
Fortunately, we’ve taken the liberty of filling in the blanks in each cat’s profile so we can let you know what specific furniture items you ought to make when you want to get all the cats to visit you at least once. We’ve prepared the details in our nifty table below, but one important note we’d like to make is that not all of these are the cats you’ll encounter in the game. There are more cats you can get acquainted with when you unlock other secret areas.
Those mentioned in our table are the cats included in the Profile tab by default, and whom you will encounter when you craft the Long Ladder and gain access to the 2nd floor. We’ve also included the time of day each specific cat visits so you’ll know if you need to switch between furniture items once daytime or nighttime arrives. Daytime visits are from 7AM to 7PM, while nighttime visits are from 7PM to 7AM based on your device’s clock settings.
Some cats will only appear in the 2nd floor as their visiting requirements are exclusive to furniture items that can only be crafted for the 2nd floor. Other cats will require a fellow cat to be present so they can visit. Some will need special items that can be crafted via the inventory, such as a Yarn Ball or Umbrella. All this information is also indicated in the table below.
| Cat | Visiting Requirements | Time of Visit |
| Oreo | Nothing specific | Anytime |
| Fluffy | Nothing specific | Anytime |
| Curry | Any cushion | Day |
| Beans | Any kitty house | Night |
| Tushie | Any scratcher | Anytime |
| Racoon | Any cat tower | Night |
| Brainy | Any cat tower | Day |
| Lechat | Any table | Night |
| Choco | Any mat (for porch) | Anytime |
| Leo | Flower Mat (for porch) | Anytime |
| Naro | Any hammock | Anytime |
| Jiyong | Any toy, any food bowl | Anytime |
| Lulu | Any table | Day |
| Scarf | Any banner, any cat tower | Anytime |
| Froggy | Any shelf, any rug | Anytime |
| Huskie | Any bowl, any carpet | Anytime |
| Bunny | Yarn Ball (special item crafted via inventory) | Anytime |
| Choppa | Long Ladder | Anytime |
| Harry | Any mat (for stairs), any frame | Anytime |
| Meo | Umbrella (special item crafted via inventory) | Day |
| Love | Huskie must be present | Anytime |
| Bun | Mint Ceramic Bowl, any kitty house | Anytime |
| Rex | Warm Stove, any rug | Anytime |
| Bambie | Boracay Perch or Kentucky Perch, Cactus Shelf or Graceful Shelf (2nd Floor) | Night |
| Grey | Box Obsession (special item crafted from inventory) | Anytime |
| Strongs | Flower-Road (special item crafted from inventory) | Daytime |
| Laon | Any shelf, any cushion | Night |
| Lucky | Any tent, any painting (2nd floor) | Night |
| Happy | Any tent, any painting (2nd floor) | Day |
| Smiley | Warm Stove, Towel (special item crafted from inventory) | Anytime |
| Foxy | Warm Stove, Towel (special item crafted from inventory | Night |
| Creams | Navy Plaid Bed or Grey Plaid Bed, any rug (2nd floor) | Anytime |
| Oboro | Any shelf (2nd floor) | Anytime |
| Tux | Pasture Carpet, Pinky Walls (left and right) | Day |
| Handsome | Santorini Perch or Provence Perch, any shelf (2nd floor) | Day |
| Mango | Any sofa, Mango Table | Night |
| Kiki | Spooky Pumpkin Vine, Tick-Tock Clock | Night |
| Hoodie | Royal Sofa, Zigzag Red Carpet | Anytime |
| Highness | Pharaoh Banner, any sofa | Anytime |
| Raincoat | Any cushion, any light (2nd floor) | Anytime |
| Lion | Yellow Dotted Bed, Modern Mustard, Luxury Lemon Wall (left and right), Yellow Ribbon Curtain (2nd floor) | Anytime |
| Belle | Minty Wall (left and right), Duckling Bed, Mint Jewelry Drawer (2nd floor) | Anytime |
| Goblin | Raincoat must be present | Anytime |
Now that you know what each specific cat requires to visit, you can cross-reference these items with the Furniture Collection sets to also increase your chances of completing a set and getting a bonus. Additionally, we recommend prioritizing furniture items that have been specifically mentioned in our list.
For instance, Lechat, Lulu, and Mango are cats who will visit if you have a table, but Mango specifically wants a Mango Table so craft that first. Lechat and Lulu will visit as long as you have any table. Unfortunately, the Mango Table isn’t included in any of the Furniture Collection sets so decide whether you want to invite more cats or get more bonuses instead.
Craft Furniture with the Least Variants
As for another approach you can take when crafting furniture, also consider crafting types with the least variants first, specifically the Long Ladder and the Warm Stove. Not only will the Long Ladder give you access to the 2nd floor, but you’ll also be able to attract Choppa to visit you. The Warm Stove, on the other hand, will attract Rex, Smiley, and Foxy, provided you also have a rug for Rex and a towel for both Smiley and Foxy. It’s a win-win considering you don’t have to worry about other variants for these furniture types and you also attract a number of cats into your home.
Collect Dailies
Like ads, daily rewards are also a staple in most mobile games. In Secret Cat Forest, collecting daily rewards, which are called Attendance Rewards, will give you a boost with bonus wood.
At the end of the week, you’ll also be able to collect Whiskers, which is an item you can use via the Special Craft option. Whiskers are exclusive to the Attendance Reward so make sure to login every day to get Whiskers. You can claim your Attendance Rewards by clicking the calendar with a pawprint in your inventory. Watching an ad upon claiming your reward for the day will double its amount.
Kick Back and Chillax
Although we’ve dedicated this guide to actively progressing in Secret Cat Forest as much as you can, being patient is just as important as collecting materials and crafting. In fact, the game itself encourages you to take a step back, close the game, and come back later. With patience, you’ll eventually be rewarded with Kitty’s Gift boxes or claim the floating box after a 2-hour waiting period.
Of course, you can check on the game every hour if you’re feeling diligent in availing of the ad bonuses, but otherwise, you can login anytime, especially if you just want to catch the cats hanging out in your home or watch the stuff you’ve collected in the GIF Album. You can fish for a few minutes and replenish your supply or see if you’re lucky enough to get some extra materials.
You can also gather some wood from the Infinity Tree for a short while. Ultimately, though, kicking back is the reward, and Secret Cat Forest is the kind of game you visit when you’ve had enough of the fast-paced action of other games or just the tiresome routine of life in general. It’s a casual game, after all, so take it slow and chill out with your feline friends!
With that, we conclude our beginner’s guide for Secret Cat Forest. Hopefully, you were able to get some ideas about crafting the right furniture, as well as allocating your time and resources in a productive way. There are lots of other cats you can make friends with and more areas in the house that you can decorate with tons of unique, adorable furniture, so be patient and enjoy the game as much as you can!
Who’s your favorite cat? Is there a furniture item you wish was available in real life? Which of these fuzzy furballs do you think has the cutest GIF? Do you have some more tips for your fellow cat lovers? Feel free to share your thoughts in our comment section below!
Birdie
Saturday 4th of May 2024
Thanks very much for this, it's very useful! I've apparently already been playing for five-plus days (according to my rewards), and can attest that this info is accurate. I wish it was this easy to get all these lovely cat toys, trees, and beds in real life. :)
So far Naro is my favourite, as his eyes bug out and his tail puffs up when you pet him. :D