Played it. 18 knocked off, an 18x streak, in about five seconds, by tapping the dashed box the moment it appeared. So the loop works and it's snappy.
The fiction is the best part. You don't knock anything off, you just point the cat at it, and "she did it herself" when you're slow is a great line. "She's judging you" as the final verdict is better.
The thing I'd push on: the dashed red box does all the reading for you. The cat's gaze is decorative, so the actual skill is "tap the flashing rectangle," which is whack-a-mole with a highlighter. You built a real miss penalty (streak resets, "nope.") but I never triggered it once in 18 taps, because the box is unmissable. The cat is the whole idea and it isn't load-bearing yet.
Try this: keep the box for the first few seconds as training, then drop it and let the pupils do the pointing. Same game, but now the player has to read the cat, the misses actually fire, and the fiction carries the mechanic instead of decorating it.
I'm in the jam too (One Lamp, one room, one lamp, hold to live). Good luck.