Cats are, as the internet has established since its founding, wonderful creatures. They’re cute, mischievous, funny little beasts that we have somehow been lucky enough to get to live with.

It is important to remember, however, that cats do not occupy the same world that we do. These are little predators that we have invited into civilization and then largely stopped supervising, so they go wherever they want to. A cat could wander through the kitchens with just as much aplomb as a throne room, and wouldn’t see much difference in either. Except that food probably falls to the floor less often in the latter.

So, for your D&D game, cats allow you to play with the idea that there are worlds in plain sight which most people don’t even notice.

Maybe your Party arrives at a manor where someone has been murdered. Everyone is accusing everyone else, but what people haven’t noticed is the victim’s cat. Let’s call her Lady McWhiskers. Not a magical familiar or a wild-shaped Druid. Just a cat, who doesn’t understand why things are so busy all of a sudden.

But if you watch it, you might learn something.

Lady McWhiskers keeps scratching at a particular door every night. Why? What does it want there? Can it smell the rats in another room? Does it know that door will help it get to the kitchens faster? Who knows? But you can use that cat as a signal to your players that there’s something to look out for.

Maybe the cat keeps hissing at one particular servant every time they draw near. Everyone else gets the full cat treatment—rubbing on the legs, purring, maybe batting at their bootlaces. But this one guy comes in the room and suddenly we have hissing and a bottle-brush tail.

Perhaps the cat keeps disappearing behind a piece of furniture and showing up somewhere it shouldn’t be able to reach. Just as your Players realize the cat is gone, Lady McWhiskers shows up on top of a wardrobe, or meowing from inside a locked cabinet, hoping that some nice person will let her out.

It’s important to remember: Lady McWhiskers is not magical. She isn’t Lassie, imbued with greater-than-average feline intelligence. She’s just a cat. But that doesn’t mean the Players can’t learn from her behavior and advance in the story that you have planned.

You could even put Lady McWhiskers at the center of the story: the only witness to the murder that has the whole house in an uproar. She saw the whole thing, and she doesn’t care about jurisprudence or presumption of innocence or anything. A solid casting of Speak With Animals could get you at least part of the way to a solution. As far as the cat understands it, anyway:

Who killed Lord Blackwood?
Bad-Smell Man.
Okay. Fine. But… what does he look like?
Man. Smells bad.
(sigh) Okay. Anything else?
Didn’t feed me.

Hey. I never said the cat would be helpful, but that could still be a way to point your Players in the direction of the murderer.

Another way to use cats in your game might be as a barometer of danger. In any city, for example, there are almost certainly cats just about everywhere. Walking along the rooftops and fences, chasing rats across the street, strutting about like they own everything they see.

But there’s one neighborhood that the cats avoid. No one really notices it until someone points it out, and then… hey. Yeah, you haven’t seen a cat all day. And maybe most people aren’t that bothered by it. Except for the little Dwarf girl, standing on the corner, tears running into her beard, asking if anyone has seen Mister Mithril anywhere.

And that’s when the Ankhegs erupt from underground.

Or the opposite – too many cats! Perhaps there’s this one old, run-down warehouse that’s never been able to keep a tenant for long. And one day, people start to notice cats heading towards it. First a few, then a lot, then way too many. And they’re all sitting outside the warehouse and just kind of… staring at it. Bonus creepiness if they’re purring.

Now your Players might discover that the warehouse that keeps changing hands. It hasn’t failed because it’s in a bad part of town. Rather, it’s been built atop an ancient temple, one which was old and lost before the city was built on top of it. But it’s been waking up, and now it’s calling clearly.

That doesn’t mean the cats are part of whatever the Ancient Blood Cult of Nyarlthenagaggon is cooking up. It just means they’ve noticed something shiny, so to speak, as cats so often do. And if they’re anything like my cats, they’re probably figuring out how to make a mess of whatever the cult is doing.

The salt circle on the floor won’t work if it’s got little pawprints in it. The Five Gems of the Umberworld need to be placed in very specific positions, which won’t last a minute once the cats get involved. And it’s very hard for High Priest Trevor to give a stirring villain monologue when Tibbles is using his Staff of Innumerable Sorrows as a scratching post.

Finally, think about how attached owners are to their cats. I have two, and I would burn the world down if I needed to protect them. Which I’m almost sure they would do for me. Probably.

Regardless, there’s nothing wrong with a Cat Rescue adventure. Perhaps a wealthy Noble needs their purebred cat back because the big All-Waterdeep Cat Show is coming up. Or maybe a Wizard put a special arcane gem on their cat’s collar, not realizing until too late that it held the soul of a mass murderer, looking to escape.

Now your Players get to try to catch a cat, which is far easier said than done. This cat can lead them on chases through places only a cat can go, through narrow cracks in walls, along the roofs of buildings, through crowded market squares that the cat can navigate with ease. With enough skill challenges, this can be an exciting and frustrating little adventure for which your Players will be rewarded richly. Because I know I’d give anything for my little miscreants’ safe return.

And before one of your smart-aleck Players say, “Well, I just Mage Hand the cat. Done!,” have them make an Animal Handling check. Because you just tried to pick up an unwilling cat with an invisible hand, and anyone who’s tried to pick up a cat that doesn’t want to be picked up will know just how hard that is.

Cats don’t care about your campaign. Not one bit. Your players will never fight one—they’ll spend a session chasing one, negotiating with one, or watching helplessly as one ruins a Blood Cult’s evening, which is a perfectly good use of a CR 0 creature. And maybe, if you’re really lucky, your whole adventure might be saved—purely by accident—while looking for a warm place to take a nap.