I love to hold a stranger's post. Letters are good. Though, those padded protective envelopes are better – what's inside that needs that extra level of protection?. But a box, especially one whose contents move a little inside when you tilt it. Oh, that mystery is the most marvelous. It could be anything in there. Stolen jewellery, returned love letters, coffee maker pods. Anything.

Given the chance to run a post office, I'd like to think I would be a responsible guardian for everyone's mail, faithfully transiting it to its destination, but I know that I would be doing everything in my power to work out what was in the parcels, so long as I could do it in a way no one would ever know.

So I am desperately sad to report that Cat Mail Co., a cosy game where you run a post office for cats, gives you very few opportunities to pry into the private lives of felines.

Image credit: Gamersky Games / Maracas Studio

True to form for many a cosy game, Cat Mail Co. sees you taking over from someone who's retiring from the business they've run for years. And, as ever, in a subtle propaganda against the elderly, the lazy bones have let their day-to-day work go to seed. In this case, the old post master has left the place in a right tip, with packages piled up with no rhyme nor reason. Large boxes, small tightly bound envelopes, and packages wrapped in twine are heaped in the corner of the storage room and littering the floor. Young muggins here will have to clear the place up, but not before they serve a few customers.

As the name Cat Mail Co. suggests, you run a post office exclusively visited by cats. As a first-person game, it is unclear whether you, too, play a cat, but as no one I've met in the Steam demo has said "Back off, two legs!" (or words to that effect), I have to assume you don't play a human.

When you ring a bell at the front desk a cat appears to either drop off a parcel or pick one up. If they're picking up, they'll give you a little to go on – "It's as tall as me", "It's tied with a red ribbon", "It's the one with a clover sticker on it" – and the name it's addressed to, and then you need to rummage about in the back until you find it.

Image credit: Gamersky Games / Maracas Studio

If the cat's dropping a package off, the process is more involved. You need to stamp it with the correct destination, weigh it on the scale, and ensure it's got the correct number of stamps for its weight. You can also put it through the X-Ray machine to learn if the package needs a fragile or heavy sticker. (Fragile parcels will be damaged if you put anything on top of them, and heavy ones will damage anything placed beneath them.)

At the end of your shift, a boat arrives and you need to load it up with the parcels addressed to the destination the cat captain's sailing off to next.

It's all very charming, but I can't help but feel there are many missed opportunities for snooping.

For one, the cats tell you little about the parcels they're picking up. What I wouldn't give for a "Ah, my nip's arrived. Finally I'll be able to sleep through my neighbour's nightly caterwauling!" (Though, they would likely just call it 'Wauling'.) or muttering to themselves as they leave "Be strong, Boots, this time you will finish the knitting and not just play with the balls of twine."

Image credit: Gamersky Games / Maracas Studio Image credit: Gamersky Games / Maracas Studio

But, also, let me look inside the parcels. That doesn't need to be by opening them up, but if I'm putting them through an X-Ray machine already, let me see what they're sending. Give me a glimpse of the secret lives of these cats. Maybe it's just one of those sticks with a feather on a string they like to chase, a laser pointer, or a binder of their owner's likes and dislikes and how to best use them against them. Just something that shows me what these cats are up to outside of the halls of the post office.

I did enjoy the process of organising the mail room, weighing the parcels, and sticking the correct stampage across them. I'm a creature of process and I love a little cleaning up, but I'm also a nosey curtain twitcher and I look forward to the cosy game that lets me indulge both these parts of me.

Until then, I will continue making up back stories for the cats I serve. Why, for instance, is Poyon Upsetears's partner in the header image so visibly pissed off to be collecting their partner's package?