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~
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.
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.
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!
----
I'm not a cat person and somehow have inherited a black kitten from each parent.
----
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
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'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.
It doesn't work. I have the laptop next to my screen and an external keyboard. The cat always chooses the cold external keyboard instead of the warm laptop, because that's the center of my attention.
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.
We once got a cat bed with a soft canopy. It held up due to the stiffness of the fabric. The cat found out that it’s possible to make the canopy sag by putting her full weight on it. She never actually slept inside it, only on top of it. When she died of old age, the bed looked old and disheveled, but the inside was pristine…
Ditto, a short box from wet cat food worked really well to keep my cats off the laptop.
I have a USB keyboard and external monitors, so the laptop sits off to the side, and is warm, so they loved to sleep there. Particularly a problem since it also has a button that powers off the laptop. I made a keyboard cover, but even then it was problematic with them sleeping on it (thermal throttling).
Putting a box on the desk solved that, they prefer it, until a second cat wants to join the party, which is thankfully rare.
I deliberately leave the most recent delivery box out for my cat to lounge in. Sometimes it’s a small studio flat, other times (like when my 3d printer arrived) it’s a whole palace. She likes them either way.
I have a cat bed[1] that's attached to my desk. It's got a "monitor arm" and a bed on top. My cat loves to see what I'm doing all day so she will just lay there for hours and watch me work.
Seems designed by people who definetly do not work from home with cats.
The cats demand to be on top of the desk, within attention reach at all times.
Pro tip: even big cats love to lay in the top cover of a printer paper box. You can adorn the outside, but keep the inside plain smooth cardboard as they are extremely fond of that feel.
Lap-insistent cat made it impossible to use a keyboard. I finally bought a desk-height cat "tree" (maybe a shrub...) and put it beside my chair. He'll move to it after some scratching, and he's happier because he can actually nap.
Putting "cat desk" into Amazon didn't show any custom desks, but did come up with a wide range of desk attachments for cats, as well as "cat laptop" (a scratching board shaped like a laptop) so this doesn't feel very surprising.
I agree with other commenters that this has about 99% chance of being ignored in favour of your keyboard, though.
my cat personally wants to be between me and the monitor right in front of my face. so maybe designing a desk with like, a dip or hole or something where the cat can go into would be good
yeah, this is no go. What you want is a way for the cat to be in a box front and center. So an underdesk keyboard tray that doesn't have room for a cat to sit on, but is big/deep enough for your hands, keyboard, and mouse and a "box" on the desk proper that the cat will naturally gravitate too. Of course, this works best with desktop machines or external monitors and keyboards instead of just a laptop.
Heh, cool. It's the complete opposite of my idea - an office chair for people who work at home with a dog. It's just a regular office chair but double wide - an office loveseat maybe? Anyway, the point is that the couch just isn't ergonomic enough for me to be productive, but I like when my dog cuddles me while I work.
I have a relatively big office chair and do exactly this. I ordered the chair online so I didn’t know that it would be quite so big. Now my dog has learnt to hop on to the chair and curl around behind me. I do end up sitting on the edge of my seat but obviously my dog’s comfort takes priority.
I swear that once upon a time I sat at a desk, and it had a label printer sitting on it, and the box of labels was in a box fed through a hole pretty much like that... except I think it was kinda square with rounded corners. The "shelf" under the main part looks like you could put a retractable keyboard mount under there. Is this a joke?
Seriously. This desk does the opposite of what I need. My cat has no issue getting on top of the desk. I need the desk to keep the cat off the keyboard and a shield over my mousing area before the cat settles it and denies mouse access.
I put a chair next to my chair and now my cat sits there so she can easily bat my USB wires and threaten my hair. She also sometimes hops onto my desk and gently taps at loose things or tries to chew up papers. I think this desk would offend her, but maybe the hole would make for fun surprise attacks at me?
I agree with all the comments that say the cats will likely not use the desk as designed, but note that they did manage to take all these photos with the cat in the designated places, albeit not a single photo with the person actually typing on the keyboard as opposed to playing with the cat.
Maybe the desk really is designed for people who work at home, if their job is cat photographer.
Valuable lesson about understanding your potential customers. There is in fact zero chance of my cats (and probably most others) sitting where they are supposed to, they much prefer being on top to look around - and sometimes to look intently at the screen as though they are reviewing my code.
I am working from home, my office is actually the former (and current) "cat room". For nearly 10 years my SO and myself were a foster home for rescue cats. And quite a few stayed here for various reasons.
None of them would use the desk. But they really enjoy their cameos in my Teams and zoom calls. And when I am not at my desk, when I am closing my laptop for the day, they instantly enjoy flopping down on the still warm machine.
> There’s another cat space on the underside of the desk surface, in the normally unutilized space in front of your knees when you’re sitting.
Yeah… If you're of a typical Japanese length. My knees appreciate all the space they can get, and that very much includes the bit of 'unused space' where a cat can go in the article.
(Living in Japan as a student really made me feel like a two metre tall giant at times. Classroom desks at Japanese universities were universally too small.)
I'm sorry Japan, but this is not how cats work. Cat "flight or fight" response is to run and climb a tree. They prefer to be up high, not down low in some cabinet. Feels safer for naps.
That’s silly. Cat will get on your keyboard anyway. The only real solution is to get heated floors. So my cat prefers sitting under my chair or desk and never gets on it.
Also illegal here in Denmark, if you use it while working from home. Desks must be height adjustable. Your employer is responsible for providing ergonomically correct office equipment. Basically any influencer and YouTuber who's showing "clever" desk hacks or builds fails because their creations aren't height adjustable.
Not illegal, but much harder to find than the sliced, cured belly meat (often from the side of the belly) usually meant when we just say “bacon” without qualification. One can get Canadian bacon, cured side bacon, cured back bacon, uncured pork belly, uncured side meat, uncured back meat, turkey bacon, beef bacon, and several other things in bacon-like categories. If you just say “bacon”, though, you’re probably going to get pork belly meat cured with salt and/or some form of sugar, and possibly smoked.
Wait, what? Can you chose not to use a height-adjustable desk, and your employer is only responsible for offering you one, or are you 100% forced into using a height adjustable desk?
I actually hoped for a good solution here, but this is basically a table with holes. I would not dare call such a table a solution for annoying cats. On youtube there are many examples that are better. My favourite one here is where the walls of the room are climbable areas for the cats.
I will never understand the accomodations people make for a pet which gives you so little in return. If most owners were 100% honest and in private I reckon at least 50% would admit their cat is an asshole.
I mean they don't even smile like a dog. They look miserable most of the time!
It's like an abusive relationship where nothing you do will please them LOL
Yes, I'm a dog person ;)
There must be something to the toxoplasmosis theory
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, 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~
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.
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
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!
----
I'm not a cat person and somehow have inherited a black kitten from each parent.
----
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
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'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.
Put a useless keyboard down there and pretend you are typing with your toes.
It could have a special heated area of the desk that isn't used for any technological purpose
It doesn't work. I have the laptop next to my screen and an external keyboard. The cat always chooses the cold external keyboard instead of the warm laptop, because that's the center of my attention.
Makes sense. Cat probably thought you were grooming and warming up the keyboard just for her.
Exactly my thought, given my experience with fellow felines.
That is inevitable :)
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.
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.
We got a nice cozy fuzzy cat bed. So naturally the cat decided to sit in...the cardboard box the bed came in.
We once got a cat bed with a soft canopy. It held up due to the stiffness of the fabric. The cat found out that it’s possible to make the canopy sag by putting her full weight on it. She never actually slept inside it, only on top of it. When she died of old age, the bed looked old and disheveled, but the inside was pristine…
I just put an appropriately-sized cardboard box on the corner of my desk.
Ditto, a short box from wet cat food worked really well to keep my cats off the laptop.
I have a USB keyboard and external monitors, so the laptop sits off to the side, and is warm, so they loved to sleep there. Particularly a problem since it also has a button that powers off the laptop. I made a keyboard cover, but even then it was problematic with them sleeping on it (thermal throttling).
Putting a box on the desk solved that, they prefer it, until a second cat wants to join the party, which is thankfully rare.
I deliberately leave the most recent delivery box out for my cat to lounge in. Sometimes it’s a small studio flat, other times (like when my 3d printer arrived) it’s a whole palace. She likes them either way.
Mine likes them as well, but usually within 24 hours they're transformed into thousands of tiny cardboard pieces.
Chewy.com deliberately indicates that its boxes are for cats.
Also, their brown paper filler is loved by my cat. He doesn’t like Amazon packaging paper, but is all over Chewy paper. I wonder if they add a scent.
Just put a box top on the corner of your desk as a cat trap.
I have a cat bed[1] that's attached to my desk. It's got a "monitor arm" and a bed on top. My cat loves to see what I'm doing all day so she will just lay there for hours and watch me work.
[1]: https://a.co/d/0hymOUdn
Seems designed by people who definetly do not work from home with cats.
The cats demand to be on top of the desk, within attention reach at all times.
Pro tip: even big cats love to lay in the top cover of a printer paper box. You can adorn the outside, but keep the inside plain smooth cardboard as they are extremely fond of that feel.
I put a small blanket in an inverted printer paper lid. Instant hit.
The can was always at arms reach for scritches and cat debugging.
There's just no room on my desk. But I put a chair next to mine and sometimes she sits there to watch.
Lap-insistent cat made it impossible to use a keyboard. I finally bought a desk-height cat "tree" (maybe a shrub...) and put it beside my chair. He'll move to it after some scratching, and he's happier because he can actually nap.
Putting "cat desk" into Amazon didn't show any custom desks, but did come up with a wide range of desk attachments for cats, as well as "cat laptop" (a scratching board shaped like a laptop) so this doesn't feel very surprising.
I agree with other commenters that this has about 99% chance of being ignored in favour of your keyboard, though.
my cat personally wants to be between me and the monitor right in front of my face. so maybe designing a desk with like, a dip or hole or something where the cat can go into would be good
yeah, this is no go. What you want is a way for the cat to be in a box front and center. So an underdesk keyboard tray that doesn't have room for a cat to sit on, but is big/deep enough for your hands, keyboard, and mouse and a "box" on the desk proper that the cat will naturally gravitate too. Of course, this works best with desktop machines or external monitors and keyboards instead of just a laptop.
Heh, cool. It's the complete opposite of my idea - an office chair for people who work at home with a dog. It's just a regular office chair but double wide - an office loveseat maybe? Anyway, the point is that the couch just isn't ergonomic enough for me to be productive, but I like when my dog cuddles me while I work.
I have a relatively big office chair and do exactly this. I ordered the chair online so I didn’t know that it would be quite so big. Now my dog has learnt to hop on to the chair and curl around behind me. I do end up sitting on the edge of my seat but obviously my dog’s comfort takes priority.
I was hoping to see a glass surface for cats with keyboard and mouse space underneath so a cat can’t sit on backspace and escape key. No luck.
If only we could plug our cats in and use them to type. Call it a purrallel port.
They prefer cat-5 cabling.
I swear that once upon a time I sat at a desk, and it had a label printer sitting on it, and the box of labels was in a box fed through a hole pretty much like that... except I think it was kinda square with rounded corners. The "shelf" under the main part looks like you could put a retractable keyboard mount under there. Is this a joke?
More like cat tree you might get no work done on but good for te kitties
Seriously. This desk does the opposite of what I need. My cat has no issue getting on top of the desk. I need the desk to keep the cat off the keyboard and a shield over my mousing area before the cat settles it and denies mouse access.
Something like this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/b1tay1/the_decoy_keybo...
Maybe something like David Duchovny's hyperbaric hand chamber from Zoolander[0], but with a mouse inside.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJH3pXLa8o0
Electric blankets. I put mine in the chair next to me and my cat will furiously ask me to turn it on each morning. Three hours of peace.
I put a chair next to my chair and now my cat sits there so she can easily bat my USB wires and threaten my hair. She also sometimes hops onto my desk and gently taps at loose things or tries to chew up papers. I think this desk would offend her, but maybe the hole would make for fun surprise attacks at me?
Since Japan is a rule following society I assume the cats there will sleep only in the designated areas.
I agree with all the comments that say the cats will likely not use the desk as designed, but note that they did manage to take all these photos with the cat in the designated places, albeit not a single photo with the person actually typing on the keyboard as opposed to playing with the cat.
Maybe the desk really is designed for people who work at home, if their job is cat photographer.
Valuable lesson about understanding your potential customers. There is in fact zero chance of my cats (and probably most others) sitting where they are supposed to, they much prefer being on top to look around - and sometimes to look intently at the screen as though they are reviewing my code.
There are desk attachments that will allow your cat to lord it over you from on high.
I have a bookshelf and a cat tree near my desk, they do indeed do that.
Also need a split keyboard so a cat can sleep in between the halves.
I love the weight limits being described in case someone has a particularly chonky cat
All fun and games until the cat ends up sitting in front of your monitor, just like my cat is doing right now because it is warm.
Had to move my browser up to see what I am typing.
You need a stand such when the cat's weight is detected in front of the monitor, the monitor is lifted up.
Then the source of heat will disappear and the cat will simply move to the 2nd monitor.
I am working from home, my office is actually the former (and current) "cat room". For nearly 10 years my SO and myself were a foster home for rescue cats. And quite a few stayed here for various reasons.
None of them would use the desk. But they really enjoy their cameos in my Teams and zoom calls. And when I am not at my desk, when I am closing my laptop for the day, they instantly enjoy flopping down on the still warm machine.
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...
Every time I get up my cat steals my chair even though he has his own next to mine
Could be because that one is warmer because you sat on it.
Get two identical chairs.
I think they like the heat. They also love to sit on warm car hoods after the car is shut off. Maybe a heating pad set on low would attract them.
My cat and I want a chair with a little shelf on the back by my head where he can sit.
I have a rolling wire rack with plants on it next to the desk. One shelf is dedicated to a cat bed and toys.
The website design, the post content, the pictures... I get a big OO's web feeling reading this; that's weird!
> There’s another cat space on the underside of the desk surface, in the normally unutilized space in front of your knees when you’re sitting.
Yeah… If you're of a typical Japanese length. My knees appreciate all the space they can get, and that very much includes the bit of 'unused space' where a cat can go in the article.
(Living in Japan as a student really made me feel like a two metre tall giant at times. Classroom desks at Japanese universities were universally too small.)
They just took a computer desk from the 90s and cut three holes in it.
I'm sorry Japan, but this is not how cats work. Cat "flight or fight" response is to run and climb a tree. They prefer to be up high, not down low in some cabinet. Feels safer for naps.
Something like https://desknest.com seems much more likely to work.
> There’s another cat space on the underside of the desk surface, in the normally unutilized space in front of your knees when you’re sitting.
"Normally unutilized"? This is where the drawer goes. Otherwise, it's just a glorified table, not a desk.
Just get a cardboard box, like your latest Amazon delivery. They are a magnet for cats.
Nah, they like to lay on the laptop to eliminate their competition. They want all our attention.
That’s silly. Cat will get on your keyboard anyway. The only real solution is to get heated floors. So my cat prefers sitting under my chair or desk and never gets on it.
I cannot tell if this is real or satire, but it is brilliant for online cat people.
cat review: 1 star, I want to sleep on my warm desktop tower again
Pretty poor design all around.
Also illegal here in Denmark, if you use it while working from home. Desks must be height adjustable. Your employer is responsible for providing ergonomically correct office equipment. Basically any influencer and YouTuber who's showing "clever" desk hacks or builds fails because their creations aren't height adjustable.
And my cat sleeps behind the laptop anyway.
Remarkable. What else is illegal there?
Not proper bacon, which seems to be illegal in the USA!
Not illegal, but much harder to find than the sliced, cured belly meat (often from the side of the belly) usually meant when we just say “bacon” without qualification. One can get Canadian bacon, cured side bacon, cured back bacon, uncured pork belly, uncured side meat, uncured back meat, turkey bacon, beef bacon, and several other things in bacon-like categories. If you just say “bacon”, though, you’re probably going to get pork belly meat cured with salt and/or some form of sugar, and possibly smoked.
This comment made this post worthwhile. Thanks for the tip!
Wait, what? Can you chose not to use a height-adjustable desk, and your employer is only responsible for offering you one, or are you 100% forced into using a height adjustable desk?
For real, what is that? World of Warcraft icons on a generic fantasy background?
[1] https://soranews24.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2026/03/ch...
I actually hoped for a good solution here, but this is basically a table with holes. I would not dare call such a table a solution for annoying cats. On youtube there are many examples that are better. My favourite one here is where the walls of the room are climbable areas for the cats.
They should add radiative heating. Cats often just want to steal your warmth.
That's what the tower PC is for.
I will never understand the accomodations people make for a pet which gives you so little in return. If most owners were 100% honest and in private I reckon at least 50% would admit their cat is an asshole.
I mean they don't even smile like a dog. They look miserable most of the time!
It's like an abusive relationship where nothing you do will please them LOL
Yes, I'm a dog person ;)
There must be something to the toxoplasmosis theory
I’m a dog person, but most cats are lower maintenance than most dogs.