Summary
- A bereaved Animal Crossing fan honored their late cat by adding her as a villager in New Horizons and New Leaf.
- Modding tools were used to create an in-game version of the cat, named Cookie, with a black-and-white tuxedo appearance.
- Despite some challenges like a name conflict, the player can now show their love to Cookie with special care in-game each day.
An Animal Crossing fan in mourning over the recent loss of their beloved pet cat has added her as a villager to two different games, making for a heartwarming tribute. While Animal Crossing: New Horizons and New Leaf don’t include the functionality to add in new non-human villagers, this player used some clever tools to give their cat a couple of chances at a virtual life.
Of all the Animal Crossing games, New Horizons has by far the largest roster of different villagers that players can recruit and interact with on their islands, with nearly 500 unique animals to choose from. There are 26 cat villagers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, making them the largest group of villagers by species. They come with a broad range of appearances and personalities, like the helmet-clad racing enthusiast jock Kid Cat, snooty fashionista Monique, and smug business cat Raymond.
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But even with all those options, none could replace Reddit user Friendlypoe’s cat, Cookie, so the player went to work with a couple of Animal Crossing modder tools to make Cookie an official villager in their New Horizons and New Leaf villages. Cookie sadly passed away on November 21, 2024, and the player has spent nearly two weeks since that time creating in-game tribute versions of the feline friend. Like her namesake, the in-game Cookie is a black-and-white tuxedo cat with one partially white ear and bright green eyes, as well as an adorable black heart-shaped nose. Modding the games was definitely a challenge, especially with New Horizons, but the payoff of the virtual reunion definitely seems worth it for this player.
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One small problem the player ran into was the inability to accurately enter Cookie’s name when programming her into New Horizons. Instead, the home programmer instead had to settle for the name Cooki. This problem may have been caused by a conflict in the coding because of the existing Animal Crossing dog villager named Cookie, who made her original appearance in the franchise’s first game, the Japanese-exclusive Dōbutsu no Mori, or Animal Forest. Cookie the dog is a recruitable village in New Horizons, though she doesn’t appear in New Leaf.
Even without her name being spelled perfectly in both games, or the inability to add her cozy-looking neck brace, these in-game models are still adorable tributes for this cat-loving gamer to have made for their old furry friend. This player always makes sure to give the in-game version of the cat a piece of perfect Animal Crossing fruit whenever she runs up asking for a snack, and if the real-life Cookie was treated just as well, she surely lived a happy life.
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