DAY 5&6!!
This was a time of suffering. I spent the last two days trying to figure out the first half of my swipe code. Transforms and translations make more sense to me now, but that knowledge was hard won. I would get one part working and then the other part would break and I went back and forth like that for way longer than I should have. The Discord server was an absolute blessing for this and together we finally got it working but we had some amusing things on the way there.
Like I said, we did get the swipe working, now I just need to make it reset itself and mirror it for the other paw. At least it isn't still dragging the cat into the void. I fixed that by setting the paw and cat to different collision layers so they don't see each other but everything sees them. That way I don't have to code in the physics for hitting something with the paw and can just use the engine's physics.
I'll probably spend tomorrow designing the main level so that I can give myself a break from coding hell. I set myself up a Trello (right here, if anyone's interested) so I can keep myself organized and focused.