Cat word search
Thirteen everyday cat words hide in this 12x12 grid, from a four letter MEOW to seven letter PURRING. Words run in all eight directions, so check the diagonals and read backwards too. Six more cat boards print from this page.
Curated by 
Esme Rook
·
Updated August 2026
Play it right here
Drag across the letters to select a word. Words hide across, down and diagonally, forwards and backwards. Works with mouse and touch.
Which words are hidden in this cat word search?
Thirteen: purring, tabby, catnip, meow, feline, pounce, prowl, paws, whisker, mouser, tomcat, calico and knead. They hide in a 12x12 grid in all eight directions, so words run diagonally and backwards as well. PURRING is the seven letter anchor and the sensible first target; MEOW is the short one that hides longest.
A cat page, not another animal page
This site already has three animal boards and not one of them is about cats. The zoo animals word search is lions and giraffes, the ocean animals word search is sharks and jellyfish, and the dinosaur word search is triceratops and fossils. None of the eighty five words on these seven cat boards appears on any board this site has ever built, in either language, and the build refuses to run if one ever does. That constraint shows: WHISKERS, KITTEN, CLAWS and SCRATCH were all wanted here and were all already spent, so the page board says WHISKER, PURRING and PAWS instead, and every one of them is a word a cat page wants anyway. The rest of the collection lives in animal word searches.
Seven cat boards to print, one for each part of the animal
The board on this page is the general one. Six more print from here, and each takes one part of the subject and gives it a whole grid: the breeds, the body, the behaviour, the keeping of one, a gentle sheet for children and a hard 15x15 for people who already live with a cat. Every sheet is built from its own word list and carries its own solution page. Two word terms run together on the board, the way word searches have always set them: paw pads is PAWPADS, litter tray is LITTERTRAY, scratch post is SCRATCHPOST.
The 12x12 board on this page
The playable board above, printed exactly as it stands: thirteen everyday cat words from four letter MEOW to seven letter PURRING, hidden across, down, diagonally and backwards.
The breeds: twelve names off a pedigree
Twelve breed names on a 13x13 board, from the ten letter Abyssinian down to the four letter Manx, taking in the hairless Sphynx, the blue grey Chartreux and the curly coated Devon Rex.
The body: what a cat is actually made of
Twelve words for the parts, on a 12x12 board: the pads under the foot, the vibrissae that measure a gap before the cat commits to it, the dewclaw that never touches the ground and the scruff a mother carries her kittens by.
What cats do, on the biggest grid here
Twelve behaviours on a 14x14 board, the largest eight direction grid on this page: the midnight zoomies, the chatter at a bird through glass, the loaf, the slink, the headbutt that is really a greeting and the sunbeam followed across the floor all afternoon.
Keeping one: the first fortnight
Twelve words a new owner meets straight away, on a 13x13 board: the litter tray, the scratch post, the microchip, the carrier, the first vaccine, the cat flap and the hairball nobody warns you about.
The gentle one, for children
Eight short words on a 10x10 grid, across and down only and never backwards, so a five year old can finish a whole sheet unaided: kittens, cuddle, playpen, tiny, soft, yarn, nap and bell.
The hard one, 15x15, and the biology behind the habits
The hardest sheet here: sixteen words in a 15x15 grid using all eight directions, from thirteen letter domestication and tortoiseshell out to the tapetum behind the eye, the papillae on the tongue, the flehmen response and the polydactyl paw.
Print it or play it
Play the 12x12 right on this page or print the free PDF; the separate solution sheet marks all thirteen words on the same grid, so the puzzle can go round the table while the answers stay in your pocket. The playable board, the PDF and the solution all come from one generated puzzle, so they can never disagree. Every sheet prints clean in black and white, which is what a school copier and a kitchen table both want.
