Gamestore review - Cat and Mouse - Bucktown

October 30, 10:35 AMChicago RPG ExaminerMichael Shorten

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Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting a gamestore in the Bucktown area of Chicago - Cat and Mouse Games. (http://www.cat-n-mouse.com) It is located on Armitage, tucked into a nice facade with other stores and residential homes around it - a typical Chicago neighborhood. It's owned by Linda Schmidt (and by Andre LeMoin, according to the website, although the staff spoke only about Linda). It has been open a little over a year.

You will need to use street parking for Cat & Mouse. Parking is not metered and I did not check into the residential streets to see if parking permits were required. The CTA Blue Line Western station is approximately 3 blocks southwest of the store.Cat & Mouse is closed on Mondays but open at reasonable hours the rest of the week.

Cat & Mouse's store is extremely clean, open, bright and accessible while having a lot of shelves and standing floor displays for games and puzzles. There were two tables there for playing games. Cat & Mouse has a great many opened demo board games that people can try out. The store is laid out to emphasize their main audience, children and parents who want to buy games for their kids. A good third to half of the store is set up with games and puzzles for children, with separate areas for the more adult games. There was only a small shelf given to the latest Dungeons & Dragons books and miniatures. I was pleased to find more wargames than I expected, and there were quite a number of interesting European boardgames.

For the roleplaying gamer, however, this store is not going to be what you are looking for. There are no scheduled games and the staff member I spoke with was not aware of any RPGs being played there. In previous emails to the store, they have not participated in RPG events like FreeRPG Day. I came away thinking that this store has a very specific audience and is completely focused on that. I certainly find no fault in that, but I was disappointed that there didn't seem to be any interest in expanding a bit to provide more support to the RPG audience.

I can't really, in good conscience, rank Cat and Mouse as I was there as an RPG gamer and this was not a store for that audience. My overall impression is that if you're a boardgamer and you live in the area, and/or you have young children and you want to find something outside the standard fare found at the big box stores, this is a great option. For RPG'ers, you will want to go elsewhere.

Cat and Mouse Games
2212 W. Armitage
Chicago, IL 60647
773-384-4454