How to Play

Kneading Cat Typing is a typing practice app where a kitten mascot cheers you on while you widen your reach little by little, starting from the home row of the keyboard. This page walks first-time players through the screen, how practice works, how scores are calculated, and how your records are saved.

The screen

The screen is divided into a few areas. The layout stays the same in every situation.

Left (mascot): the kitten that cheers you on. The faster you type (the higher your score), the faster it swishes its tail and kneads with its front paws. While a question is being timed, the elapsed seconds are shown here, and during the countdown, the seconds remaining. Drag with the mouse or your finger to look at the kitten from any angle.
Center (practice area): the menus for choosing a course, rank and question, and the question text and input field.
Bottom (keyboard): an on-screen keyboard. The key you are pressing lights up, so you can check which finger pressed which key without looking down at your hands. While you are typing a question, the next key to press is marked as well. The F and J keys carry a small line, like the bumps on a real keyboard, to mark the home position.

Starting practice

In the Practice section in the center, first choose a Course. There are three courses: “JIS Keyboard - Japanese (Romaji)”, “JIS Keyboard - English” and “US Keyboard”. Pick the one that matches your keyboard and what you want to practice. The course decides the layout of the on-screen keyboard and the order of the ranks you go through.

If you are learning English typing on a keyboard bought outside Japan, “US Keyboard” is usually the right choice. The “JIS Keyboard - Japanese (Romaji)” course is meant for learners of Japanese: after the key-position ranks, it moves on to typing Japanese sentences (written in hiragana and katakana) in romaji.

Next, choose a Rank and a Question, then press the “Practice” button below them to start. The rank menu lists only the ranks you have passed plus the next rank you are working on. At first only the easiest rank is available, and every promotion exam you pass adds another. The rank menu starts at the highest rank available to you. What each rank covers is explained on the Ranks page.

Typing a question

When you press “Practice”, a 3-2-1 countdown starts. During the countdown the question is hidden and typing is not accepted, so that everyone starts at the same moment, like a race.
Timing starts the instant the countdown ends and the question appears. The time until your first keystroke counts too. The cursor is placed in the input field automatically, so just start typing.
Each character you type is colored: green when correct, red when wrong. While you type, your current score is shown right next to where you are typing.
Timing stops the moment you have typed the whole question correctly, and the result appears.

When you make a typo

When you hit a wrong key, the kitten mews and droops, and you cannot type any further while the mistake remains. Delete the wrong character with Backspace and type it correctly to continue. Because you can never move on past a mistake, the whole question is always typed correctly by the time you finish.

Japanese questions (for learners of Japanese)

The “JIS Keyboard - Japanese (Romaji)” course has questions where you type hiragana and katakana sentences in romaji. Turn off your computer’s Japanese input method (IME) and type in half-width alphanumeric mode; if Japanese input is on, a warning appears on screen. The romaji to type (a recommended spelling) is shown, and the part you have finished turns into the actual kana. Parts shown in uppercase are katakana and must be typed while holding Shift.

Scores and passing scores

Your score is “the number of characters typed correctly per minute”. Wrong characters and characters you deleted with Backspace are not counted. For example, finishing a 30-character question in 15 seconds gives a score of 120. This is counted differently from WPM (words per minute, counting five characters as one word), the common measure of typing speed, so the result screen also shows “score ÷ 5” as WPM for reference.

Each question has its own passing score. It is calculated automatically from the question text: a question whose characters can all be typed without leaving the home position has the maximum, 200 (about 40 WPM). The more a question makes your fingers travel between keys, or the more characters need Shift, the lower its passing score. Questions in one-handed ranks are set another 20% lower. While you type and on the result screen, both are shown as “score/passing score”, so you can see how close you are.

In practice, finishing at or above the passing score shows “Cleared!”, and finishing below it shows “Almost there!”. When you finish at or above the passing score, the kitten celebrates at full speed for a few seconds and mews happily. Only the score at the moment you finish counts: even if you were above the passing score partway through, you have not cleared it if you end up below it.

Promotion exams

To pass the rank you are working on, choose that rank in the rank menu and press the “Promotion exam” button (you do not need to choose a question; the button cannot be pressed while a rank you have already passed is selected). The exam picks one or two questions at random from that rank, and you pass when you reach the passing score on every question. The exam ends as a fail as soon as you miss the passing score on any question. When you pass, the next rank becomes available for practice and exams.

The result screen

The result screen shows your score, the passing score, the WPM equivalent and your personal best for that question. When you beat your personal best, “New record!” appears. You can press the button on the result screen with the space bar too, so you can move on without taking your hands off the keyboard. The question menu also shows the personal best of each question. You can share your result on X or Bluesky with the buttons on the result screen. Choose a question and press “View records” to see how your score on it has changed, as a line chart with the date along the bottom. Practice is shown with a paw print, and a promotion exam with a smiling cat with pricked ears when that question reached its passing score, or a cat with drooping ears when it did not. “Reset scores” clears these records together with the ranks passed and personal bests.

Saving and resetting progress

The ranks you have passed, your personal best for each question and the course you chose last are saved automatically in your browser (local storage). There is no sign-up or login, and next time you open the app in the same browser you can pick up where you left off. Your records are never sent to the operator’s server. That also means they do not carry over to another device or browser, and they are erased if you clear your browser’s site data. The English and Japanese versions of the site share the same records in the same browser.

To start over, press “Reset scores” in the “About this app” section at the bottom of the top page. If you confirm the message, all ranks passed and personal bests are erased. The selected course is kept.