Wow, thank you so much for the thorough review! You really captured what we were going for: multiple layers of subversion.
We tried to communicate the ladder bit with the little, "where am I? I need to get home" message at the start of the first cat stage, but with some more playtesting we definitely could've communicated a few things a bit better. The cat collection misdirection was totally on purpose though, we still wanted it to be a horror game (of sorts).
Thanks for playing, we're glad you enjoyed it!