Cats is a safari-themed video slot from IGT, released in 2012, built around one neat scoring trick: a single cat symbol can count as two. It runs on five reels, three rows and up to thirty paylines, with a paw-print free spins round and a top prize worth 10,000 times your bet.
The line-up is a roll-call of big cats — lion, tiger, panther, cheetah and leopard — and there is a free demo if you want to try it before staking real money. Below we explain the Split Symbols, the paytable, the bonus and whether it still holds up.
How Cats Plays: The Split Symbols
Cats uses a familiar five-by-three grid with up to thirty adjustable win lines, so combinations form left to right from the first reel. What sets it apart is how those combinations are counted.
Every cat symbol lands in one of two forms: a single, showing one animal, or a double, showing two. A double counts as two cats in a winning line, so the game scores the number of cats rather than the number of symbols. Five double symbols on a line therefore pay as ten matching cats.
That one rule does a lot of work — it turns ordinary-looking spins into bigger wins and gives the base game more punch than its thirty lines suggest. If you like feature-led reels, our wider set of video slot machines covers similar ideas.
Wilds and the Big-Cat Paytable
A Wild symbol rounds out the base game. It substitutes for every symbol except the Paw Print Scatter, and like the cats it can land as a single or a double, so a split Wild stretches further across a line.
The paytable follows a clear hierarchy. The panther sits at the top and can pay up to 2,500x your line bet, the other big cats land in the 10x to 1,000x range, and the lower-value playing-card symbols pay 5x to 200x without splitting.
Stack the Split rule onto those values and the maths adds up quickly. The overall ceiling is a 10,000x maximum win, which is generous for a game with no jackpot attached.
Paw Print Free Spins
The bonus is driven by Paw Print Scatters, which appear on reels two, three and four. Landing four of them pays two times your total bet, while five or six trigger the free spins round.
Five Paw Prints award five free spins, and six award ten. The free games run on the same reels and lines that triggered them, so the Split Symbols and the full paytable stay in play throughout.
It is a short, classic free spins feature rather than a sprawling bonus, ending when the spins run out or the 10,000x top prize lands. The value comes from the Splits doing their work across those extra spins.
RTP, Volatility and Stakes
The version we list returns 94.93%, the figure most casinos run, though some operators use a lower setting closer to 93.04% — so it is worth checking the paytable at your site. Volatility is medium.
That medium pace suits the design: the Split Symbols keep reasonable wins landing, while the panther line and the free spins supply the occasional bigger hit. It is steady rather than feast-or-famine.
You can play anywhere from one to thirty lines and scale the bet per line, so stakes run from small coins up to high-roller totals. As part of IGT’s catalogue it uses the studio’s certified random outcomes on every spin.
Playing Cats in Demo Mode
The free demo is the easiest way to see the Split Symbols in action and learn how the paw-print bonus triggers before committing real money. It runs the full game with play credits, with no download or sign-up.
A handful of spins is usually enough to judge the medium-variance rhythm and decide on a line and bet setup. You can take a free demo spin here alongside other slots to compare it.
Is Cats Worth Playing?
Cats has aged better than many slots of its era because its core idea is genuinely good. The Split Symbols make wins feel larger than the grid suggests, and the big-cat paytable gives every spin a clear top target in the panther.
It is not flashy. The 2012 visuals look dated next to modern releases, there is no jackpot, and the free spins are brief. Players chasing deep feature trees or big bonus buys will find it thin.
But as a clean, well-built base-game slot with a smart scoring twist, it stays an easy recommendation for casual play. For the same IGT vintage with a bigger decision per spin, Crown of Egypt swaps splitting cats for a 1,024-way toggle. Fans of IGT’s style can also try Balloonies for a lighter, feature-led alternative.
