Widescreen: 'Stray,' aka the cat game, is a soothing, delightful diversion

Thousands of video games are just a few button pushes away, but truly fresh experiences are hard to come by. Last week's release of "Stray" changed that.

Developed by a small team at BlueTwelve Studio and published by the video game arm of indie movie studio Annapurna Pictures, "Stray" is *not* any of these things:

• An open-world game with a map bigger than the state of Illinois,

• A frustrating "rogue-like" where you start from the beginning after every death,

• A punishing test of timing and endurance,

• A hypercompetitive online multiplayer deathmatch.

"Stray" is, to put it succinctly, the cat game.

You control a cat. A cat who can meow on command, push cans off ledges, scratch up the sofa and take a nap. And honestly, that might be enough - a soothing diversion for an irritating (putting it mildly) time to be alive.

But this is a video game, so your cat has to find its way out of a concrete-and-neon city populated by robots. You solve puzzles, leap from building to building and communicate with a drone who can apparently speak "cat." (The drone stows itself in a little harness on the cat's back. It's pretty darn cute.)

It's a delightful experience, and one likely to pique the interest of the nongamers in your family - my wife fired up the PlayStation in my home office for the first time last week, and our cat jumped up on the TV stand to get a better look.

"Stray" is available for PS4 and PS5 for $29.99, and is also included in the PlayStation Plus Extra game library. It's also available on PC through the Steam platform.

It's 'Saul' good

This past week's fourth-to-last episode of AMC's "Better Call Saul" was the fourth in a row, dating back to May 23's midseason finale, to make me wonder: "Is this the best episode of the entire show?"

"Nippy," which moves the action from New Mexico to Nebraska and is presented entirely in black and white, seemed like a quaint departure from the show's usual fare: Cartel-lawyer-in-hiding Saul Goodman (Naperville's own Bob Odenkirk), now managing a Cinnabon in Omaha with the new moniker Gene Takovic, helps a couple of local losers rip off a department store at the mall.

For a while, it's a peek at the show we thought we were getting before "Better Call Saul" premiered, a light comedy about a lovable loser.

But then the heist plays out as Gene distracts a mall security guard (Jim O'Heir) with a giant cinnamon roll and Cornhuskers football talk, and director Michelle McLaren and writer Alison Tatlock ratchet up the tension while also hitting us with punchlines. Gene gets a taste of the thrill he used to enjoy as Saul, and the audience is left wondering whether his criminal past will catch up with him.

Just like they did with chemistry teacher-turned-meth kingpin Walter White, executive producers Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan are, predictably, delivering an unpredictable denouement for Saul. Er, Gene. Er, Jimmy McGill. Whichever name Odenkirk's character goes by in Aug. 15's final episode, I am confident that Gould and Gilligan will have found a way to satisfy the audience and be true to characters we've watched for over a decade across two series, dozens of webisodes and one Netflix movie.

Hopefully that last sentence doesn't come back to haunt me, Lalo Salamanca-style.

• Sean Stangland is an assistant news editor who didn't even mention that Carol Burnett(!) was in that "Better Call Saul" episode.