The newest Monopoly token, a cat, rests on the game board at Hasbro Inc. headquarters, in Pawtucket, R.I., Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013.
Hasbro left it up to the Internet to choose its new Monopoly game piece – and as we all know, any time you ask the Internet anything, the answer is usually Cats. So as of today the trusty iron — which was engaged in a furious battle with the shoe and the wheelbarrow for the bottom spot on the poll — succumbs to old age and irrelevance, to be replaced by a frisky feline.
(MORE: Which Monopoly Piece Would You Have Voted Off the Board?)
But that got us thinking: surely there are many other board games out there that could use a cat infusion. Here are our suggestions for some classic games; let us know your ideas in the comments.
Chutes & Ladders
This classic preschool game pits kid against kid in a race to the top of the board, bedeviled by chutes and abetted by ladders. But let’s face it: a cat could do it in half the time. Skilled at pouncing into hard-to-get places — and then refusing to climb down — a cat piece would have a ridiculous advantage over the child-shaped pieces. Our only nagging doubt is that part of Chutes & Ladders’ appeal (for parents, anyway) is the clear moral choice it presents for young players: Break a window, go down a slide; do your chores, climb up a ladder. And as Camille Paglia noted, cats basically have no morals. At all.
Operation
How else are you going to recruit the next generation of aspiring veterinarians? Instead of hearing a nerve-rattling buzzer noise when you mess up, though, you’ll have to answer to screeching cat sounds.
Battleship
Same game, just change the name to Cat-tleship. And give Rihanna more lines in the inevitable film version.
Clue
Allergies can be deadly. And adding a cat to the game of Clue will likely make them the new weapon of choice. Anaphylactic shock is no fun, but it’s certainly more humane than having Professor Plum bludgeon an unsuspecting sucker with a candle stick in the conservatory.
Risk
When stockpiling your troops in Risk, don’t just settle for cavalry — upgrade your soldiers and artillery to cat-valry. It’ll make the invasion you’ve been plotting all the easier. After all, if history has taught us anything, it’s that nothing wreaks havoc on your enemies quite like the introduction of a non-native species.
Candy Land
Kitty Kupcake would be a much cuter character than Gloppy the Molasses Monster, even her name sounds like a reject from a Katy Perry music video.
Hungry, Hungry Hippos
One word: Hairballs.