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Desk for people who work at home with a cat

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Re: Desk for people who work at home with a cat

#151

Post by Vedor »

nottorp wrote: post #92
MichaelDickens wrote: post #13

I can foresee a design flaw, which is that the cat will ignore all the specially designated areas and sit on your keyboard instead.

Exactly! Although my last cat was nicer and slept between the keyboard and monitor. Pushing aside every small piece of crap that I kept on the desk of course (had to regularly gather sd cards that she pushed off the desk) but at least she let me see and type!

Mine too likes to lie between the keyboard and the monitor, but if I want to actually work I still have to remove her from the desk. The issue is that, while she usually is a lovely cat, the hand movements over the keyboard are turning her predatory instincts on, and sooner rather than later she's going to bite...

Re: Desk for people who work at home with a cat

#153

Post by dmd »

aitchnyu wrote: post #150
fullstop wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have food periodically delivered from Chewy, and I keep the box. Each month, the old box is recycled and the new box is put to use: https://i.imgur.com/lFgp63O.jpeg There is definitely an attraction aspect related the "freshness" of the box, as there are squabbles over which cat gets to use the new box. These squabbles wane over time, until the new box arrives.

Are they using some olfactory "palatant" on the boxes?

No. The simple explanation is “cat”.

Re: Desk for people who work at home with a cat

#155

Post by burnt-resistor »

tauroid wrote: post #97
MichaelDickens wrote: post #13

I can foresee a design flaw, which is that the cat will ignore all the specially designated areas and sit on your keyboard instead.

Split keyboard. Far enough apart and you have a dedicated cat zone.

Split keyboard mounting each half to the chair and VR headset instead of a monitor. That way, they can't get in front of the monitor or walk across the keyboard.

A frmr coworker of mine wrote a Linux kernel module (not an April Fools' joke) to detect and prevent feline input... either stuck or neighboring keys. I don't think it was ever merged.

Re: Desk for people who work at home with a cat

#156

Post by burnt-resistor »

ivraatiems wrote: post #7

The problem is that cats can flawlessly detect when something was made for them to use, and then will not deign to use it. Meanwhile, the cardboard box you have forgotten to take to the recycling for three weeks will become their palace.

And bags.

The exceptions to not pandering to cat overlords are scratching posts and litter boxes.

Re: Desk for people who work at home with a cat

#157

Post by freedomben »

freedomben wrote: post #91
andix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Contrary to popular belief cats don't sit there because a laptop keyboard is warm. They also sit on external keyboards or even in front of a tablet without a keyboard (blocking the view to the screen). They just want your attention.

Partially correct. For sure a lot of it is getting attention, but they do care about the warmth. I've walked in to my office plenty of times to see my cat sitting on my laptop when I haven't even been in there for hours. She will even find the laptop and lay on it when it's in random places around the house. Reproduced with three different cats over the yeras. The warmth is definitely a cat magnet.

I should also add (too late to edit the original comment), that when the laptop is off and I haven't used it in hours, she doesn't care about it. It's only when it's on that she does (which is why I think the heat is a factor).

Re: Desk for people who work at home with a cat

#158

Post by teamonkey »

rkagerer wrote: post #126
miriam_catira wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, god forbid, stupid creature that I am, I buy _the wrong flavor food_. Then it's all "why are you trying to poison me, hooman? do you not love me anymore??"

And yet despite all our deficiencies they still choose to spend their time with us, how great are these creatures.

They are very patient with us

Re: Desk for people who work at home with a cat

#159

Post by lstodd »

geephroh wrote: post #37
mgarfias wrote: post #27

Was easier when I had a big CRT on my desk, and the cat would just chill on top and bat at the mouse pointer moving around the screen.

Sounds like a good diy project with an old monitor and a raspberry pi...

I have an EGA monitor (one of the Thomsons), but a custom built USB CRTC/framebuffer (that uses SRAM from 386-486 motherboards I still have laying around somewhere) instead of RPi. It does not help with the cat though.

Re: Desk for people who work at home with a cat

#160

Post by __david__ »

x______________ wrote: post #46
MichaelDickens wrote: post #13

I can foresee a design flaw, which is that the cat will ignore all the specially designated areas and sit on your keyboard instead.

Past experience with cat-wrangling over the years have taught me one thing (amongst many): It doesn't matter what the object is, if human cares about it, cat will use said object as a cat would, in order to communicate with human. Communications from cat tend to be along the lines of: I'm hungry, or in most cases, I want attention (play/stimulation). Past objects observed: Keyboards, houseplants, pens & pencils, kitc…

My cats actually love their cat tree. I’ve had to replace it because they clawed through the scratching post legs (all the way through the cardboard underneath the sisal rope).

Knowing that they love rectangles explains a lot too. They love every Amazon box that arrives, the folded hand towel in the bathroom, the top of my pc mini tower (rectangular and warm). Though they get off the tower when I’m playing a game since the gpu heats up so much and the exhaust fans blow out the top—it just gets too hot for them. I made a “cat catcher for my bed—a single hand towel folded in half lying on the otherwise featureless comforter. There’s almost always a cat there when I wake up in the morning.

This desk might actually work for me since one of my cats loves to sleep right under my office chair, dangerously close to the wheels. He’s got real long hair and I find tufts of fur around the chair and feel absolutely horrible. Crazily I almost never notice when it happens, he doesn’t yelp! I finally ended up buying a small scratching post with a bed on top and set it under my desk. He instantly took to it, so no more running over the poor cat. As a bonus he’s now in petting reach so I can get my cat fix whenever I need (petting is a two way street).

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