Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: The game of Cat Herding is one in which cat and herder players alternate turns, with the evasive cat moving along non-trivial paths between vertices, and the herder deleting single edges from the graph. Eventually the cat cannot move, and the number of edges deleted is the cat number of the graph. We analyze both when the cat is captured quickly, and when the cat evades capture forever, or for an arbitrarily long time. We develop a reduction construction that retains the cat number of the graph, and classify all (reduced) graphs that have cat number 3 or less as a finite set of graphs. We expand on a logical characterization of infinite Cat Herding on trees to describe all infinite graphs on which the cat can evade capture forever. We also provide a brief characterization of the graphs on which the cat can score arbitrarily high. We conclude by motivating a definition of cat herding ordinals for future research.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Ashmore, Rylo, Dyer, Danny, Milley, Rebecca
Language: English
Subfield: Computational Theory and Mathematics
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4417517046
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