THANK YOU V MUCH FOR PLAYING AND THE KIND WORDS! It makes me SO HAPPY that you were able to recognize and appreciate some of the more subtle layers of the game! 
There was so much more I wanted to do but didn't have enough time to get to them. Definitely hear you on the pain points. 
I initially made it so that the Cats automatically "ascended" after being alive for 9 days with the bar on their left "full" to represent them passing from old age but I felt it might've been too unintuitive and sad to see a cat leave the island that way! I debated in the last hour before the deadline to introduce a "cozy mode" but didn't have confidence in myself to not break anything while implementing it LOL. 