MH10K
4 min readJun 1, 2018

It was sometime in November, 2017. Rumblings of “Cryptokitties, cryptokitties, cryptokitties!” started appearing throughout various reddit forums that I frequented at the time, based on my moderate, but unexpectedly successful run with certain cryptocurrencies, primarily Ethereum. I wanted to know more if only to understand what all the noise was about but life, at the time, just simply got in the way. This would have to wait.

Fast forward to New Year’s Eve. I had discovered a different crypto game that was making a little noise at the time about being “the next Cryptokitties”, so I decided it was time to investigate the original. I had already installed metamask and moved a little ETH to that wallet. Time to learn about these digital cats. I decided that my name should be “Must. Have. One.” Call it fomo, or call it the need to continue to grow the breadth and depth of my crypto knowledge (probably somewhere in between), I bought a kitty. Why that kitty? Don’t recall. Probably because it was cute. Or something. By virtue of the blockchain, I can confirm that it was kitty ID 436646, a generation 12 calicool laperm with cute eyes and 2 paws that looked like they had been dipped in mud. Apparently, I paid (also confirmed by the blockchain) 0.0689-ish ETH for it and 10 Gwei of gas. I suspect someone was pretty happy about that sale at the time.

I bought another cat. Cheaper this time, although half as old. If that’s what “Gen 6” meant. I didn’t know. Different eyes. Different markings. Different colours. Then I bought another. But this one was strange: It had birds for parents. That’s weird. I figured it meant something but had no idea what. I named it “My Parents Were Birds” which remains its name today.

Then, as is tradition, I bred two of them together. The one with the patchy pattern and the cute one with the raised eyebrow. Why? Because! That’s why. I didn’t know about gene readers yet or breeding calculators or, well, anything (except there are sometimes mutations which, at the time, must just be random) but I knew you could select two kitties, pay some ETH, and ka-pow! New kitty!

And the new kitty kind of made sense. It had the patchy pattern. Like one of the parents had. The main colour was like one of the parent’s colour. It had the same shape as a parent. And eyes. And background. Simple, right?

On and on this went. Buy. Breed. Read. Search. Buy. Breed. Read. Tumbling down the rabbit hole. It’s 1:30PM. We have guests coming over later. Lots of time. I transfer more ETH. Deeper and deeper.

I learn about kittyexplorer. Some traits are rare, you say? Selkirk? Icy? Hintomint? And they are worth how much? I, wait for it, must have one. At this point, I know what a Gen 0 (zero – bad medium font!) cat is and that they appear every 15 minutes. I know that purchases aren’t instant and there are probably other people trying to buy the same new Selkirk kitty that I want to buy, so I act quickly. I wait. I refresh a few times and someone else’s name is there. Crap. But then it appears for sale. For over 1.1 ETH. After being purchased for about half amount mere minutes before. That seems excessive, right? But that extreme markup barely slows me down. I bought that kitty from him/her almost instantly and now it would be mine. I had an Icy Selkirk! It seemed like it was a thing at the time. Maybe you had to be there. I was.

Sidebar: if you’ve read other CK stories on Medium, you may have come across one that describes the night the “Papa saved CK” – it would be months later when I discover that my first skirmish in the kittyverse was with none other than Papa himself through one of his various alt accounts, so shout out to him for that.

Now, what do you do when you have just spent 1.1 ETH (I wonder how that number will feel in 5 years) on a rare Gen 0 Icy Selkirk kitty? You breed it with a Gen 8 hintomint ragdoll totesbasic kitty, of course. I don’t remember if I was trying to hit a mutation or if I was feeling euphoric about my win, but I bred those two cats. And I was rewarded with a perfectly forgettable Gen 9 shitcat, er, stray. (As a community, we’ve decided that it is offensive to all kitties to imply that they are, well, shitty and “stray” seems to be catching hold) at some point I even bred that Gen 0 with the original Gen 12 that I bought, but I don’t want to talk about that. It’s a badge of dishonour that is worn by many from their early days with CK.

Then the next Gen 0 kitty appeared. This time, I won it outright. Sadly, though, it wasn’t a Selkirk. But it was an Icy and now I owned my second Gen 0 cat. Then there was more breeding. And on and on this pattern went. Periodic visits from my wife and subtle but perceptible head shakes as she left the office after reminding me of the eventual arrival of our guests.

I have to admit it: I was already hooked. I got ready for the party. Then went back to the office. I poured myself a drink. Then went back to the office. Guests arrived and were greeted. I slipped back to the office for a quick check on my kitties. We socialized and drank and eventually welcomed the arrival of 2018. Check on cats. Curious visitors to the office asked what I was doing. Or why. I couldn’t really explain it except to say “it’s not just cartoon cats – there’s something really cool going on here.” But all they saw were weird, but oddly cute digital kitties on a screen.

I didn’t know how deep this would ultimately go but I did know that I Must. Have. More.

Next: Kittyhats! For when a kitty’s personality can only be expressed through the addition of a pair of sunglasses or a tuxedo and martini.

MH10K
MH10K

Written by MH10K

digital kitties / cute, fun and sometimes rare / arguments always

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