zdwDesk for people who work at home with a cat
I can foresee a design flaw, which is that the cat will ignore all the specially designated areas and sit on your keyboard instead.
It could have a special heated area of the desk that isn't used for any technological purpose
Put a useless keyboard down there and pretend you are typing with your toes.
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, kitchen area counter and anything on it, pet ants, rock and fossil collection.. the list goes on.
And related to cat areas, the secret that I've found was to never rely on buying fancy cat furniture but rather making a unique spot for cat every few days. Blanket for comfort, areas always in sight range of the work desk but not in it (to be distracting for work). Bonus points if you visit and pet cat when they're sleeping in those spots to reinforce that this is their spot and all is well with safety and comfort.
And same for toys, makeshift toys are cheaper and more effective than overpriced pet store shenanigans (Eg: elastics, pieces of string tied together, sandwich bag clips, small bouncy toys). The secret there is also reinforcing playtime with those toys by simply playing with cat!
Edit: written with cat at arm's length distance in makeshift bed in a chair~
I awoke this morning to newcat lapping from my bedside drinking glass (with a dash of tea/caffeine). She has two other waterbowls... but I guess is mad at me because the edible I ate last night caused me to sleep in too long for her breakfast likings.
Lil'shit knows this is not allowed, on a tabletop she's not allowed upon, no less!
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I'm not a cat person and somehow have inherited a black kitten from each parent.
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At least she didn't curl up napping upon my Apple Silicon (thankfully kess attractive than older Macbook AMD GPUs)... that's when I know I've actually fucked up #catWorld
Yeah after investing in countless cat toys from the pet store, I found out that my cat's favorites are (in no particular order):
- McDonald's paper straw
- Bird feather from outside
- Empty toilet paper roll
- Shoelace
- Strap of Velcro
- Bottle cap
I think variety is the key, and we've had really good outcomes by having a few pet shop toys (feather on wand, squeaky mouse, ball with bell) that we bring out for a few hours every few weeks and then put away, so it doesn't turn into something normal for them to ignore.
Cat + bottle cap around the hours of 3am - 5am seems to be a preferred form of entertainment, from my experience
They are incredibly communicative animals. Their problem seems to be that I am a very stupid creature that often does the wrong thing, like not feeding them every time they’re hungry, sitting at a desk instead of playing with them, carrying them out of the room when they were clearly trying to get on the kitchen counter, and so on.
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.
I'm not sure if this is enough for demanding cats, but I used to type with a small dog bed directly in front of me and my keyboard behind it, so that I'd work typing with my arms around my elderly chihuahua every day. She seemed to like it a lot, and she basically had my attention every time she stirred.
I also felt that it was probably good for me for her to break my flow and demand my attention every now and then. It helped remind me to get up and stretch and be human better than I otherwise would have done.
i came across a manuscript once that had a bunch of inky paw prints across a page. the scribe clearly tried to blot one of them, merely smudging it, then decided to let the rest be. it was in a very beautiful hand, and the full page must've taken hours to write. that scribe's exasperation echoes through the ages. i wish i could find that MS again.
to be fair, the page was probably arranged in a nice sunny spot at the time of the incident.
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.