Online manual

First launch

After the first launch, the kitten appears in a screen corner and the pond runs as a desktop wallpaper. Click the kitten to open the unified management panel. On your first visit, check the desktop-layer, sound, and quit behavior before tuning the settings to your preference.

The kitten and pond stay alongside your other apps. Pond controls do not require a separate website account. On the main display, soft willow shade along the desktop-icon side helps their labels stand out.

• Click the corner kitten to open the pond, koi, feeding ranking, weather, and settings.
• Collapse the panel when you want to return to work; the kitten can keep running quietly.
• Before your first session, check whether feeding and sound match your preference.
• Steam currently lists Windows 10 / Windows 11, 4 GB RAM, and 500 MB of storage as minimum requirements. See the store for the full specification.

Choose the desktop app language

Open Settings → General → Language and choose Follow Steam / system, or select a language manually. The current desktop app provides 31 interface languages, listed by their own names; choosing one switches the interface immediately.

Changing the interface language does not translate or rewrite names you saved for the kitten or koi. The website and online manual offer the same 31 languages; their language preference is saved separately from the desktop app.

Click the kitten for one panel

The kitten menu is the single entry point. The pond tab handles feeding, invitations, and the kitten name; the koi tab handles adding and organizing fish; weather controls manual weather and time of day; settings cover sound, local music, quality, kitten appearance, and launch at login. Every page reads the same pond world; it does not create a second save.

Invite the cat to eat fish is a real pond interaction: the cat walks to the pond, watches, strikes, and then applies the current fish-count rule to the target. An invitation already in progress does not queue another one.

• An automatic invitation yields to your manual interaction while the panel is open.
• If the pond is paused, not visible, or temporarily unavailable, the panel should show why instead of claiming success.
• The full-screen viewer is a read-only view of the same world and returns to the desktop when closed.

Unlimited food drops and daily appetite

Feeding is a persistent switch and is on by default. While it is on, click anywhere in a desktop area showing the pond to drop food; fish swim to it and eat automatically. Food drops themselves have no daily click quota, per-session quota, paid allowance, or forced cooldown. Each click drops 90 grains, and only food a fish actually eats counts toward that fish’s daily total.

When the switch is off, clicks add no food and do not increase feeding records. Turning it off does not clear fish, existing food, or the collection. Turn it on again to restore click-to-feed anywhere. While the simulation is paused, the UI should say so rather than pretend that a feed succeeded.

• You can click repeatedly across displays; the multi-monitor pond is one world, so food and counts are not duplicated.
• A bank or other unreachable click location is mapped to nearby reachable water.
• Where the food lands, ripples spread across the water and each pellet makes a small ring of its own. With feeding off, a tap still ripples the water and startles nearby fish, but nothing is recorded.
• Unlimited feeding describes the food-drop input. Each koi has a daily allowance of 40–320 grains based on its size at the start of that day. Once full, it stops pursuing food until the shared reset at 00:00 local time, when growth is settled, allowances refresh, and uneaten old food is cleared. This does not create a hunger penalty.

Add, name, and draw koi

A new pond starts with 4 koi; an upgrade does not automatically halve an existing save. In the koi tab you can add a fish, choose its color and starting size, use a random pattern or draw one by hand, and give it a name. Other fish keep their names, patterns, and feeding records.

The fish collection is capped at 50. Once the cap is reached, adding a fish is refused with a clear message; it does not silently overwrite or delete an existing koi. A legacy save already holding more than 50 and up to 60 koi keeps all of them but cannot add another. Rename and release actions should show an explicit confirmation result.

• Four is the new-save starting count and the protection threshold used when the cat eats fish.
• Fifty is the first-release collection cap; legacy migration should not truncate data by accident.
• A koi needs at least 180 fully fed days to reach the maximum 4× size. Missed or partial days delay growth, and offline time does not grant progress.
• Today’s feeding ranking counts only food actually eaten that day and resets at 00:00 local time. Hand-drawn patterns, names, and growth progress are local pond data.
• Alongside your koi collection, 13 resident fish patrol the pond: silver carp, crucian carp, white-bar fish, common goldfish, zebrafish, and one guppy. They share dropped food but do not enter the koi collection, feeding ranking, or save capacity; the Pond fish switch can hide them.

When the cat eats a fish

Click Invite the cat to eat fish in the unified panel, or let a low-disruption visit happen when the desktop is idle or not busy. Both entry points use the same count rule; an automatic visit cannot bypass it.

When the catch is committed, the cat checks the real number of fish in the pond: with 4 or more fish, it may eat the one fish it caught. Exactly 4 therefore becomes 3. With fewer than 4, the cat still catches the fish to play, then puts it back unchanged. Recall, pause, a layout change, or a save failure before the commit should safely release the target rather than remove it twice.

The large mossy stone in the pond is the cat’s fishing stone. Whenever it is visible on screen, the cat hops onto it and sits at its edge facing the water; if a window covers it, the cat goes to another rock or mossy bank instead. The koi swim around every stone that breaks the surface and never pass through one.

• When the fishing stone is visible, the cat always goes there first.
• 4 fish → the cat may eat 1 → 3 fish.
• 3, 2, or 1 fish → the cat catches but does not eat → the fish is put back.
• The feeding switch controls food you drop; it does not control whether the cat follows the eating rule.

Kitten names and rename cards

The pond tab shows your kitten name, accumulated play time, and rename cards. At 8 hours, you automatically receive your first card. From the following month, you receive one card on the 1st of each month; launching later in that month also grants that month’s card. No claim button is needed.

You can hold at most one card. Monthly cards are valid only during their month, and a new month replaces an unused old card. Missed months do not accumulate or receive backdated cards. The first 8-hour card stays available until the first monthly replacement.

• With a card, choose Rename and enter up to 12 visible characters, including Chinese characters and emoji. A successful save consumes one card; cancellation, invalid names, a failed save, or submitting the same name does not.
• Time accumulates from a version that supports this feature; unrecorded time from older versions is not added. It counts while the app runs, even behind other windows, but not while paused, locked, asleep, or closed.
• Multiple displays and preview windows do not count time twice. Restarting after using a card does not grant another one that month. Months follow your computer’s local calendar.

Manual weather and time of day

The weather tab decorates the pond. Choose sunny, cloudy, rain, or snow and adjust rain/snow intensity. For time of day, choose Day, Night, or Auto. Auto follows your computer’s local time: day from 07:00 to 19:00, and night at other times.

Automatic day and night need no network connection and are separate from live weather. The first release has no live network weather or city search; an automatic-weather setting from an older version falls back to manual weather.

• Weather changes the scene and soundscape, not your fish collection.
• A network outage is not a manual-weather failure because first-release manual weather does not need a weather service.

Sound

The sound control covers the kitten meow, pond water, weather sounds, ambience, and music. Turning it off stops current and scheduled sounds immediately. The preference is remembered on this computer and shared by the management panel, kitten, and pond pages. Opening another pond page does not automatically stack background audio; that page must explicitly preview it.

• If you are working, sharing a space, or sensitive to sound, turn sound off first.
• A valid kitten click plays one short meow; drags, cancelled clicks, and secondary-button clicks stay silent.
• The current desktop build uses bundled guqin, singing bowl, and wind chime loops, plus stream, spring, and lapping-water loops. You can also import your own local music. Playback does not need a just-in-time online audio download.

Import and play local music

Open Settings → Sound, select Local music for background music, then choose Import music to select audio files from your computer. Importing copies music into the app’s local library without changing or deleting the original files. Moving an original file does not affect an imported track.

Select a track, play or pause, go to the previous or next track, or remove it. Sequential repeat follows import order and returns to the first track after the last; random mode shuffles the library; repeat one loops the current track while still allowing manual track changes. The library, selected track, and playback mode survive a restart.

• Import MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, M4A, or AAC. Each track can be up to 128 MiB, with at most 100 tracks and a 1 GiB library. Playback depends on your system’s audio decoder support; an unplayable track shows an error.
• Identical content is not stored twice. Removing a track deletes only the library copy and leaves your original file intact.
• Local music uses the master sound switch, master volume, and music volume. Muting or pausing the pond pauses playback; multiple displays play only one audio stream.
• Switching back to guqin, singing bowl, wind chimes, or music off stops local music.

Kitten appearance and optional content

The default ginger kitten is free. The Kitten area in settings shows coat and bell-collar options. An unlocked appearance is shared by the corner kitten, pond visits, and panel preview.

The default ginger kitten is part of the base app. Optional appearances and extras depend on the content listed on Steam and the corresponding ownership check; locked items stay unavailable until owned. Check Steam for final contents and availability.

• If ownership cannot be confirmed, the free ginger kitten remains available. When asked to recheck, connect to Steam and open settings again.
• Install the ArtBook separately; Open ArtBook folder becomes available only when its files are ready. An absent or downloading ArtBook does not block confirmed collar ownership.
• Appearance options do not change feeding allowances, koi capacity, or the cat’s fish-count rule.

Launch at login

Launch at login in Settings → General is off by default. Turn it on to start the wallpaper and corner kitten when you sign in to your computer. Turn it off to stop automatic startup at the next sign-in; the current pond can keep running.

Launch at login is an operating-system preference, separate from launching through Steam or owning optional content. Enable it only if you want the kitten to start with Windows.

• After changing the switch, confirm it stays in your selected state. If the change fails, the panel shows an error and restores the previous state.
• To end the current app immediately, choose Quit in the panel.

Pause and multiple displays

Pause holds the pond simulation and related interactions at their current state. Resume continues from there; it does not simulate a long hidden interval all at once. For fewer visual effects, turn off Enhanced effects in Settings → Display. Turning it on adds more water, light, and weather effects and uses more graphics resources; effects may adapt temporarily when the computer is busy. While the pond is fully covered by windows it stops drawing, and when nobody is interacting it refreshes more slowly; a click, a feed, opening the panel, or a cat visit brings the rate back.

Multiple displays form one continuous pond world. Fish, food, and the visiting cat exist once, while koi, settings, and saves are shared. Mirrored displays count as one surface. Drag the corner kitten to another display and the panel will fit that display’s available work area.

• When locked, fully covered, or manually paused, the app suspends work that is not needed.
• Display arrangement, scaling, and hot-plug changes do not create another pond or alter collection data.
• Very large multi-display layouts may look a little softer to bound render targets and memory use.

Local saves and quitting

Koi, patterns, feeding records, kitten names, rename cards, play time, weather, and settings are saved locally. Steam lists Steam Cloud support; synchronization depends on the Steam client and your Cloud settings. Imported music stays in the local music library. Website mailing-list data cannot restore your pond.

To end the whole app, choose Quit in the kitten panel. Collapsing the panel is not quitting, and closing a page does not erase the local save. If the panel reports a save failure, use Retry; until saving succeeds, do not treat an animation result as written data.

• Quit closes the corner kitten, wallpaper, and related windows.
• Restarting restores the local save and does not require an online login.
• Whether uninstall retains old data, and the public erase workflow, must be confirmed against the final release package and operator instructions.

Frequently asked questions

• Why has the cat not visited automatically? Automatic visits are low-disruption opportunities, not a fixed timer. They do not run in the background while the panel is open, the pond is paused, the desktop is full-screen, the pond is fully covered, the session is locked, or state is unknown.
• I have 3 fish. Will the cat eat the last one? No. Below 4, it only catches the fish to play and puts it back. At exactly 4, it may eat one and leave 3.
• Why did feeding do nothing? Check that the feeding switch is on, the pond is not paused, and the click is in a desktop area showing the pond. While paused, the UI should not fake a successful feed.
• What about Steam features? The store lists Steam Cloud, statistics, and leaderboards. Their availability follows the Steam release and client settings. The website does not provide a separate game account or a pond-backup service.
• Which computers are supported? The current Steam system requirements list Windows 10 / Windows 11. Minimum memory is 4 GB and storage is 500 MB; check Steam for the full specification and release availability.
• Can I use the website email as a game account? No. Website email is for launch notices or feedback contact and cannot read or restore the local pond save.
• Why is one side of the pond darker? A soft willow shade follows the desktop-icon side on the main display, helping the icon labels stay readable.