It’s a rare day that my two primary interests in life — motorsport and cats — collide, but today is one of those beautiful, beautiful days. I’m deeply pleased to report that a new Assetto Corsa mod allows you to forego the race car and hit the track with a cat instead. My dreams are coming true: race cats are a reality!
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Assetto Corsa (Assetto Catsa?) is a super customizable racing simulator that has amassed a dedicated base of modders who dedicate their time to recreating cool cars, weather effects, and more, in order to transform an already interesting game into a hyper-specific experience catered exactly to your interests.
In this case, that “hyper-specific interest” is cats.
Twitter user Hord, who is not the creator of the mod, shared a clip of these new cat cars lapping the Tsukuba Circuit. The user also noted that the cat is powered by a 3.4-liter twin-turbo flat-six engine from RUF.
If that’s the case, then these tiny cats contain far more power than my Mazda 2, and manage to lap Tsukuba in just under a minute, burning rubber and sliding around the track the whole way around.
You’ll notice some ghostly stripes of burned rubber in that clip. That’s because this mod basically preserves the RUF’s specs and driving dynamics; it just replaces the car’s body with a tiny little cat. The video also shows off two different options: an orange cat and a black-and-white cat, both equally round and in full loaf mode.
The mod isn’t available for console players, so you’ll have to settle for these beautiful babies on your computers. And I think this should probably be self-explanatory, but I’ll say it anyway: this is a fan-made mod, not an official offering by Assetto Corsa, so don’t expect the game’s makers to feel responsible for any issues you might have with these race cats. You can find the mod files here.
I am slowly amassing a horde of former feral cats who have all appeared on my porch at one time or another. There are currently four that visit outside, but I have already snatched two others to bring inside and turn into my adorable cretin children, whom I named Joseph Arrington (after the NASCAR crew chief) and Slider (after the small meat sandwich). With the addition of the four outdoorsmen who pop by every now and again, I would have enough cats to start my own racing series: almost enough cats to match the starting grid for the 2018 Indy Lights season, but not enough to warrant any FIA super license points for the Cat Championship winner.
I am aware of the internet rule, and I will now pay the cat tax: