Skip to main content

How to tame a cat in Minecraft

Building homes, farms, and dungeons in Minecraft is a blast — but what’s a dream world without your favorite feline friend? If you want a pet to pal around with or to find waiting for you at home after a long day of mining for diamonds, you can tame a stray cat.

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

10 minutes

What You Need

  • Raw cod or raw salmon

Taming a cat in Minecraft is pretty simple, but like any other task in the game, it isn't spelled out for you.

Here's our guide on how to tame a cat in Minecraft, including where to find stray cats and what they do once you adopt them.

Further reading

how to tame cat minecraft a in on village
Mojang

Where to find cats

There aren’t any animal adoption centers in Minecraft — you’re going to have to find a stray cat to bring home out in the wild. Luckily, cats are relatively easy to find. Stray cats spawn in villages with at least one villager and four beds. For each four beds in a village, a cat will spawn (up to 10), so you’ll likely have a variety of colors to choose from in an average village.

Black cats can also be found around witch huts in swamps.

In the Bedrock Edition of the game (the most common, modern version of the game on Xbox One, Windows, iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch), black cats are more likely to spawn when there is a full moon.

how to tame cat minecraft a in lying on bed
Mojang

How to tame a cat

Step 1: To tame a cat, first collect some raw cod or raw salmon from a nearby lake or river.

Step 2: Equip the raw fish and slowly approach a stray cat. Use the raw fish on the skeptical kitty.

Step 3: Continue to feed the cat more raw fish until hearts appear above its head, signifying it is being tamed. You will likely have to feed it multiple times to get it to like you, so stock up on fish before you attempt this.

Step 4: When the cat has been fed enough, the hearts will disappear and the cat will gain a collar. You now have a pet cat!

how to tame cat minecraft a in catssitting
Mojang

Cat behavior

Once you’ve successfully tamed a cat, it will follow you around wherever you go. If you lose track of your cat, don’t worry — they can teleport to a player who moves 12 blocks away. Unless commanded to sit, tamed cats do not remain still for long and explore around the player. You can tell a cat to sit and make it stay in one place -- if you wanted an indoor cat to stay in your home, for example.

When in a house, cats will climb on top of furniture on their own accord. You can often find them sitting on top of chests, beds, and furnaces. Like real-life cats, cats in Minecraft can sometimes get in your way and render chests, furnaces, etc., unusable until you move them. If they get into something you don’t want them messing with, you can push them out of the way, lure them away with raw fish, or remove blocks underneath them to get them to move.

When a player goes to sleep at night, there’s a chance a tamed cat will sleep near them. When they awake, there’s a chance a pet cat will have a gift for you — they can collect string, raw chicken, a rabbit’s foot, and other items.

Editors' Recommendations

Sam Hill
Sam Hill is a journalist and the gaming guides editor at Digital Trends. He's also written tech guides for Input and has…
How to respec your character in Baldur’s Gate 3
The player asking to respec their skills in Baldur's Gate 3.

Despite your best intentions when starting out in Baldur's Gate 3, even if you're following a guide, you might realize early on that the class or race you picked just isn't what you thought it would be. This is a long game – potentially hundreds of hours long – so having a character you enjoy playing is very important since you'll be spending so much time with them. But are you forced to restart if you changed your mind a few hours in? Thankfully Larian has offered you a way to respec your character, but it isn't in any menu. In fact, you can easily miss it, so here's how you can unlock the ability to respec your character in Baldur's Gate 3.

Read more
How to use non-lethal attacks in Baldur’s Gate 3
A halfling playing an instrument to a large badger.

If there's one thing you'll never be at a loss for while playing Baldur's Gate 3, it's ways to kill your opponents. From swords, axes, and maces to bows, magic, and poison, your potential arsenal is essentially limitless. While that's great for when you're faced with irredeemable monsters and forces of pure evil, sometimes a fight can break out with people you'd rather not kill. This could be due to a failed skill check starting a fight you didn't intend, to a misunderstanding, or because the people attacking you are connected to a group you want to stay on the good side of. When combat breaks out, you're not resigned to either killing your enemy or reloading a save thanks to a handy ability to non-lethally attack enemies, but how to activate it isn't clear. Here's how to knock out an enemy in Baldur's Gate 3.

Read more
How to fast travel in Baldur’s Gate 3
Astrion holds his chin in Baldur's Gate 3.

The continent of Faerun in Baldur's Gate 3 is massive. The landmass and scope of the world are too large to reasonably expect any player to simply run or walk across in a timely manner. Even though the game isn't a proper open world, and instead has various regions you will load between, each one can take quite a long time to navigate from one end of to the other, which can be quite a drag if you're backtracking for missed items or to complete sidequests. Thankfully there is a handy fast travel system you can utilize to zip around the world much faster, once you unlock and learn how to use it, that is. We've rolled a natural 20 while writing this guide to explain the fast travel system in Baldur's Gate 3.

Read more