If you’ve ever wandered through a Minecraft village at dusk and spotted a tabby darting between hay bales, or spotted a black cat lingering near a swamp hut, you’ve probably wondered how to bring one home as a companion. I’ve spent dozens of in-game days tracking down rare cat variants in my survival worlds, and I’ve made every mistake possible in the process: running straight at them, using cooked fish, even bringing my pet wolf along by accident and scaring every cat within 100 blocks away. If you want to skip the frustration and learn how to tame Minecraft cats the right way, this guide covers every detail you need to know.
What You Need to Prepare Before Taming a Minecraft Cat
First off, you don’t need any fancy enchanted gear or rare items to tame a cat, but you do need a few specific things to make the process go smoothly. The only required item is raw cod or raw salmon — you can catch these in any body of water with a basic fishing rod, or kill salmon and cod mobs directly if you don’t have a rod yet. You’ll need at least 5 fish per cat to be safe, though some cats will accept as few as 2, and others might take up to 10 before they trust you.
Next, you need to find a cat spawning spot. Cats naturally spawn in two places: villages with at least 4 occupied houses, and swamp huts. Villages usually have 1 to 3 cats roaming around at any time, and they respawn if the village stays populated, so that’s the easiest spot for new players. Swamp huts always spawn with one black cat, which is a rarer variant, so that’s a good option if you’re looking for a specific skin.
Before you head out, leave any tamed wolves or foxes at home. Both mobs are natural predators of cats, and even if your wolf is sitting, if it’s in the area, cats will see it as a threat and run as soon as they spot you. I learned this the hard way when I brought my wolf Max with me to a village looking for a calico cat, and I didn’t notice he’d stood up and followed me until every cat in the village had vanished into the nearby forest.
Exact Step-by-Step Process to Tame Minecraft Cats
Once you have your fish and you’ve found a cat you want to bring home, the process is straightforward as long as you take it slow. First, switch to your raw fish in your hotbar, and turn on sneak mode (hold shift on PC, crouch on console/mobile) as soon as the cat is in your line of sight. Sneaking tells the cat you aren’t a threat, so it won’t run away as you get closer.
Don’t walk straight at the cat. Instead, move a few steps at a time, and stop every few seconds to let it look at you. If the cat starts to turn away or crouch like it’s going to run, freeze and wait for it to relax again. Most cats will start to approach you slowly once they see you have fish, especially if you stay still.
When the cat is within 2 blocks of you, don’t move at all. Right-click (or tap the action button) to feed it one fish at a time. You’ll see grey smoke particles appear if the fish is accepted but the cat isn’t tamed yet, and red hearts will pop up once it’s fully tamed. Don’t click more than once every few seconds, because spamming the action button will startle the cat and make it run.
That’s really all there is to it. Once the hearts appear, the cat is yours, and it will follow you around unless you tell it to sit. You can change its sitting/standing state by right-clicking it with an empty hand, same as you would with a tamed wolf.
Common Mistakes That Ruin Cat Taming Attempts
Even if you follow the steps above, it’s easy to mess up your taming attempt if you make one of these common, avoidable errors. I’ve made every single one of these at least once, so I can tell you exactly what to skip:
- Running straight at a cat before it gets comfortable with your presence, which will make it flee immediately, and it might not come back for 10+ in-game minutes
- Using cooked fish instead of raw cod or salmon, which cats won’t accept for taming — they’ll ignore you completely even if you hold cooked fish right in front of their face
- Bringing a leashed wolf or untamed fox with you, as both mobs will chase cats and make them impossible to approach, even if you’re sneaking
- Clicking too fast or moving while feeding, which will startle the cat and reset the taming progress, meaning you’ll have to wait for it to come back again
- Trying to tame cats that spawn inside swamp huts with a witch nearby, as the witch will attack you with potions as soon as you get close, and the cat will run away during the fight
Another small mistake a lot of new players make is trying to tame a kitten instead of an adult cat. Kittens won’t accept fish for taming until they grow into adults, which takes about 20 in-game minutes. If you spot a kitten you like, you can either wait for it to grow up, or you can tame its parent first and then breed two tamed cats to get a kitten of your own. Breeding tamed cats only requires one raw fish per cat, and the kitten will be automatically tamed as soon as it spawns.
Perks of Having a Tamed Cat in Your Survival Base
A lot of players think tamed cats are just for decoration, but they actually offer some really useful perks for survival mode, especially if you build your base in a high-risk area. The biggest benefit by far is that creepers will actively avoid any area within 6 blocks of a tamed cat. That means if you have a few cats sitting around the outside of your base, creepers won’t sneak up on you while you’re building or farming, and they won’t blow up your walls if you leave your front door open.
Another fun perk is that tamed cats will bring you gifts when you wake up from sleeping. The gifts can be anything from string and feathers to rare items like rabbit’s foot, phantom membrane, or even gunpowder. I once got a whole 3 pieces of gunpowder from my tamed siamese cat after a long mining trip, which saved me from having to go hunting creepers for TNT. You won’t get a gift every single time you sleep, but it happens often enough that it’s a nice little bonus for having a cat around.
There are also 11 unique cat skin variants in the game, from tabbies and calicos to all-black and siamese, so you can collect different cats to match your base decor. A lot of players build little cat houses near their base entrances to show off all the different skins they’ve collected, which is a fun little side project if you’re tired of mining or building.
Cats are also completely immune to fall damage, so you don’t have to worry about them jumping off cliffs or tall buildings and dying like you do with wolves. That makes them a great companion for exploring mountain biomes or building tall structures, because they’ll follow you without getting hurt if they fall. You can use the sit/stand toggle to keep your cats stationed near your base entrance, so they don’t follow you into dangerous areas like the Nether or deep caves where they can get hurt by lava or hostile mobs. If your cat does take damage, you can feed it more raw fish to heal it back to full health quickly, no potions required.
Taming a cat is one of the easiest, most rewarding small projects you can do in Minecraft survival mode, and it doesn’t require any rare items or high-level gear. As long as you bring the right fish, take it slow, and avoid the common mistakes we covered, you’ll have a loyal feline companion in no time. Now that you know how to tame Minecraft cats, you can head out to your nearest village and pick out the perfect companion to keep creepers away and bring you little gifts after every long night.