After booping, check to see if you have 3 of your pieces lined up in a row, horizontally, vertically or diagonally. If you do, the Kittens of that group will "graduate" into adult Cats.

Remove the pieces from the board. Any Kittens are removed from the game and placed in the box (Kittens love boxes). Then, replace those Kittens with adult Cats from the reserve and place them into your pool of pieces (not onto the board). You will ALWAYS have 8 active pieces (not counting ornaments). You can even make a line of both Cats AND Kittens.

White lines up three Kittens in a row - and removes them from the game. Three adult Cats are now placed into the player's pool.

Alternatively, if all 8 of your pieces are on the tree, you may graduate any one Kitten, by removing it from the game and placing an adult Cat from the reserve into your pool. Should it be strategically important to leave the Kitten on the board, you could place a Cat back into your pool, instead of graduating a Kitten.

In the rare case of lining up more than three in a row, or multiple connected 3's, choose which group of 3 to graduate, leaving the remaining pieces on the board. (fig. 4) OR, if you have both a 3 in a row and 8 pieces on the board, choose which you would activate.

When your move creates more than one opportunity to graduate pieces, choose one of them. Remove those pieces from the board, leaving the others in place.