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As anyone who's been woken up by a cacophony of whining firework noises at three o'clock in the morning can wearily testify, cats love to bonk. What's more, with nine lives to play around with, you get nine times as much fun as anyone else (or nine times as much trouble...)

Take Bob Cat, for example, hero of Nine Lines, Romeo from the wrong side of the tracks, and besotted suitor of Claudette Cat, who's been kidnapped by "The Mad Scientist". This tom's so testosterone-stoned that he's willing to brave four labyrinthine levels of platform game to snatch her back. It sort of makes you wonder whose company she's going to be safest in.

Randy Bob has to jump around locating sufficient keys to release 24 other chums who are locked up in cages. Blocking your progress from the highest cliff-face to the deepest flooded tunnel are characters who munch away at your energy when you bump into them.

Be prepared as you encounter robotic stick insects, vampire owls, grumpy bulldogs and chomping piranha fish - with more than 100 rooms making up each level, the list seems endless. And as if that isn't bad enough, the whole place is littered with spikes which snatch away one of your nine lives whenever you land on them.

On the plus side you do have your ball of wool, which stuns the enemy for a second or two to let you by. Then there are the pick-ups: food to replace that lost energy, presents to shower your girlie with when you eventually reach her and various other fancy goods which enable you to fly, turn invisible and become immune to the baddies' malign touch.

The only downer is the jerky fashion with which the screen jumps from room to room, but it's a small price to pay for the colour and animation. Not only are the mutated animals frenetically energetic, they also make for an army of very vivid characters. There's some nice humour as well, like when Bob jumps off a ledge with nothing below and freezes in mid-air with an expression of comic terror before plummeting down - pure Loony Tunes. The sound however is no more than the usual cute-game jingle.

Arc aren't afraid of advertising Nine Lives as a hard game, so that's the level it ought to be judged at. You gauge the height of your jumps by how tall the tail at the side of the screen is but you need a lot of practice to master it. You also need to lose quite a few lives jumping off-screen onto spikes if you want to find your way around.

Beginners will give up on it very quickly, but if you're a veteran platform player with an insatiable appetite for a challenge then this is as tough as it gets - just be ready to cancel all engagements for the next four weeks.