Cats Split 'N' Win Slot by IGT

Twelve years after the original Cats hit land-based floors, this is what a 2026 modernization looks like on the WagerWorks engine: keep the split symbols, keep the paw-print scatters, keep the African savanna at sunset with bamboo poles bracing the grid, and bolt a Hold-and-Win coin bonus with four fixed jackpot tiers onto the side. The 2013 version only had free spins. Cats Split 'N' Win is the same franchise with a second bonus layer.

Start with the split symbols, because that's the mechanic the name points at and the one that touches every base spin. Any high-pay cat (Tiger, Leopard, Lion, Lioness, Black Panther) or the CATS wild can land as a "split" symbol, taking up half a cell and counting as two of that symbol toward a line win. Five reels, three rows, and a split symbol in every position means a payline can run ten-of-a-kind instead of the usual five. The CATS wild at the top of the paytable pays 100x for five regular, so a fully-split row carrying wilds is where the base game's biggest hits come from. There's no win-both-ways, just left-to-right line pays on the 50 fixed lines.

The Hold and Split Bonus is the real reason this exists as a separate SKU. Land six or more gold coin symbols on the base reels and every coin locks in place. You get three respins. Each new coin lands, holds, and resets the counter back to three. Coins carry random cash values (small denominations up to the four named jackpot tiers stamped on the totem ladder to the left of the grid: MINI, MINOR, MAJOR, GRAND). The wrinkle that gives the bonus its name: any coin can drop as a SPLIT coin, which doubles the cell's count and carries up to a x10 multiplier on its cash value. Fill all fifteen cells before the respins run out and the GRAND tier pays at 2,000x the trigger bet, which is also the game's ceiling. Land the named GRAND coin directly and the same prize awards on the spot.

Free spins sit in third place behind the two split mechanics. Five paw-print scatters award five spins, six pay ten, with enhanced reels stacking the coin count higher during the round. No buy bonus exists, which on a high-volatility Hold-and-Win design with a 2,000x cap is a notable absence. The path to the bonus is the slow one, paw-by-paw or coin-by-coin, the way IGT shipped these games before the buy-bonus era flattened everything.

Art-wise this is painterly rather than cartoon. The big cats are rendered as real portraits with detailed fur and amber eyes, the royals (A, K, Q, J) sit in jewel-tone glass plaques, and the whole reel set sits inside a bamboo-and-stone surround against an orange-gold savanna sky with acacia silhouettes. It looks like an IGT floor cabinet pulled into HTML5, which is more or less the brief.