Yay Neko Atsume again, my apologies

[GenoMerc]

Context: I just placed a rubber ball and I was hit with a wall of text, as you can see below

Sentences:
つぎにゴハンを設置しましょう
お徳用かりかりを選んで
設置してください

グッズを設置しても
ゴハン設置しないと
ねこたちはやってきません

お徳用かりかりは何度設置しても
なくなりません
こまめにしっかり補充しましょう

My terrible translation:
Next let’s place the rice

Please select and place the crunchy food package

Select the goods, and also the rice and the cats will come around

The crunchy food package won’t run out no matter how many times you select it

Diligently let’s properly replenish the packaged food

Questions:

1. What is the purpose of the negative here? “ グッズを設置してもゴハン設置しないと”
2. Why is やってきません negative here?

Tip:

1. In the game, the sentences don’t have periods, so the spacing sometimes serves as that
2. These are in sequential order, as in each 3 lines of text you see aren’t different quotes from different parts of the game

[potatonaught]

I think what’s happening in the second paragraph hinges on the と particle. It’s being used to show a natural consequence.

“If you do not place goods and food, then cats will not come and try them.”

So the use of negative is consistent throughout the sentence.

[rodan]

グッズを設置しても
ゴハン設置しないと
ねこたちはやってきません

This part is like, “even if you put out goods, the cats won’t come out if you don’t put out food”

The も conveys the even, and that may clear up for you the ないと (something like “not → then” ) and the negative at the end better.

(otherwise I think you understood it just fine)

P.S.: no need to apologize! If you’re anxious about creating too many threads though, you could use one thread and reply to it periodically, or ask brief questions in the short grammar questions thread or short non-grammar questions thread. Either way though, help is what the forum’s for!

[GenoMerc]

と is used for natural consequences as well? Is the も required for that kind of set up or just the negative and と?

[potatonaught]

I defer to @rodan for the nuance since I missed the も. I agree with Rodan that も captures the “even” part.

But yeah, と can be used for natural consequence.

“We’ll first cover the simplest type of “if” which is the natural consequence conditional. This means that if [X.] happens, [Y.] will happen as a natural consequence.” — Tae Kim. "Expressing natural consequence using 「と」

[rodan]

There’s separate grammar things going on. @potatonaught correctly spotted the use of と here.
That part doesn’t rely on a negative. You could say, “when it rains, it pours” with と just as easily.
Here’s another source on it if you’d like: Japanese Verb と Form

The other aspect is the しても, (it looks like I should have more accurately called it ～ても instead of ~も but they’re certainly related), in the “even if” sense. Here’s a source about that: https://maggiesensei.com/2015/06/22/how-to-use-ても-temo/

It’s actually the same thing happening as the next line you translated correctly! (The cheap crunchy stuff won’t run out no matter how many times you use it.) Same grammar, this one just has another conditional injected in there.

[GenoMerc]

Where is the conditional if you dont mind me asking, also which word means cheap?

[rodan]

Sure, maybe splitting it like this will make it clearer what I mean. In:

グッズを設置しても
ゴハン設置しないと
ねこたちはやってきません

If you took out one of the clauses:

グッズを設置しても
ねこたちはやってきません

… you’d have “even if you put out goods, the cats won’t show up”
(which is the same construction as お徳用かりかりは何度設置してもなくなりません, without the 何度)

And if you took out the other:

ゴハン設置しないと
ねこたちはやってきません

… you’d have “if you don’t put out food, the cats won’t show up.”

But combined, “even if you put out goods, if you don’t put out food the cats won’t show up”
conveys the full scope: goods might help attract cats (as the tutorial likely explained already), but they aren’t sufficient - you need to put out food too.

I’m not exactly sure the correct grammatical way to phrase how the -しても and と are interacting. Or even exactly what constitutes a “conditional” and what doesn’t! But that’s how it works in practice, if that helps?

I didn’t actually know the word 徳用 in the name of the infinite food it talks about - お徳用かりかり so I looked it up, glanced at “economical” and went with “cheap.” Looking at it again, probably something else would have been better, sorry! Maybe, I dunno, “bulk crispies” or something… but in any case I get the impression it’s their name for that type of food, and it connotes a big bulk bag of dry cat food to me.