Cat Tails

PREPARATION

Cut two tail-less cat silhouettes about 30cm (one foot) long out of two different colours of posterboard. (Black and neon-orange are good choices). Glue the cats onto the left sides of two horizonal pieces of posterboard in contrasting colours. (It looks good to have the black cat on an orange background and vice-versa.) Leave at least another 30cm of blank space beyond the cat for the tails. Attach the two cat posters to the wall.

Cut a cat tail from each colour of posterboard. They should be in roughly in proportion to the size of your cat cut-outs. Cut the tails into as many pieces as you have party guests. For example, if you're expecting twelve guests, then you would want to cut each of the two tails into six evenly sized pieces. If you're not sure how many will show up, it's okay to have more or fewer cat tail pieces than guests. Hide the pieces of tail around the party area. Some should be obvious, others very obscure.

Separate the guests into two teams and determine a captain for each team. A simple way to do this is to count your guests, divide by two, and randonly pull from a deck that many red and black cards. For example, if you have twelve guests, take six black cards and six red cards. If you have an uneven number, always round up. Shuffle the cards you have drawn and ask each guest to pick one. The colour of card determines their team (black=black team, red= orange team). The person with the highest ranking card of a colour is team captain. Provide the team captains with a supply of blue-tack or poster-putty.

GAME

The host sets a timer and the hunt begins. The time depends on how many guests there are, how big the party room is and how well the tail pieces are hidden.

Each team searches for pieces of its cat's tail. Whenever someone finds a piece of their colour, they hand it to their team captain to affix onto their poster. Whenever someone finds a piece of the other team's colour, they tear it up and destroy it.

The side who have completed the longest tail when the host calls time wins.