I do much/most of my “work” these days in my recliner with my laptop – CAD, setting up miniPC’s, RPi’s, old Chromebooks, etc. with Linux and/or messing about with LinuxCNC and HAL, “researching” these topics online, “troubleshooting” with Gemini, keeping up with the forums, etc… and my trusty companion, Mac, helps by occupying/sharing the space where my laptop should be.
I have a cat at home, the little booger…he is very vocal. He announces when he is in the room, when he wants you to open a door, when he wants food. Once a month or so, he wants his head scratched. The fam wanted a loving pet to hang out with…not what we got. He tricked us.
I have to keep my desk very clean or when I am gone he gets up there and pushes everything off. No other surface, just mine.
We have a huge, fluffy, partially-white cat, Winston, and he loves to be in my workshop as long as no work is happening. The moment I start in on something, he’s out of there, super quick.
Mercury’s our curious bundle of fluff. She’s constantly statically charging/discharging, I should’ve grounded the dust bucket…
My little buddy is more suited for the office I think but he does come into the shop with me. He looks so cute but he is very vicious lol. We also have a cat that is a bit of an anxiety case so he doesn’t come out much but he is making progress.
Ryan, Travis,
Pics or it didn’t happen. You have to pay the dog or cat tax.
@CarmenJ who started this thread needs to pay that tax as well!
We tried getting Miko a new scratch pad (that he uses at 3-4am). Won’t look me in the eye but clearly saying “nah” good seat but I am going to keep making a mess with this other one"…
Hahaha I thought I did he is the wrong color for how dirty my shop is haha but he comes in everyday to get some love.
Our animal count is getting a little out of hand. It was just me, my daughter and Baxter the Border Sheppard (Half border collie, half GSD)
We also had two fair fish - they were around 10 years old and huge:
Unfortunately we lost one of them in January and the other in July. But they had far better lives than most fair fish get!
Then I met my girlfriend and we moved in together. She brought two more dogs and a cat to the party:
That’s Beethoven on the left/front and Max who we think may be part potato behind him.
I forget what their breeds are other than Max is part pug and Bea is part Chihuahua - so max is very sedentary and laid back while Bea is pretty hyper and can be very annoying when he chooses to be.
She also brought her old Cat Pia with her who is pushing 13 years and mostly keeps to herself - other than to occasionally track down Bea and give him a swipe - we assume he deserves it:
So I was feeling like we had a pretty full house. But apparently I was the only one of us who felt that way.
Last February she brought home a stray cat from work - “Sassy” had been living on the playground at the school she works and she was afraid that one of the stray males would get her soon so she joined us and became my daughters cat:
And I started feeling like we were definitely at the limit of animals the house could support.
Except Sassy started getting bigger…GF and daughter insisted she was just eating well and finally putting on some weight - but I was pretty sure she hadn’t been rescued in time and a male cat had got to her.
Unfortunately I was right. In April she gave birth in my daughters sock drawer:
I was assured that once they had their shots and were fixed the kittens would find homes. I just didn’t realize that they meant our home 
So that’s Cleo the calico on the right, momma Sassy, then Freya, and finally Biscuits.
They’re….not quite right. Biscuits is the oldest and doesn’t really like people much. Doesn’t cause trouble but doesn’t hang out or like to be touched really.
Freya…well…this really doesn’t seem normal to me:
And apparently being born in a sock drawer imprinted on her so she will seek out and claim any socks that aren’t completely locked away.
She also loves to Perch on narrow ledges:
Thankfully Cleo is fairly normal - other than liking to snack on my toes just as I’m falling asleep.
None of them really come out to the shop. Baxter is too scared of noises, Bea likes the shop - but is a jerk to anyone who walks by if the garage door is open, max is too lazy to go out there….and the cats aren’t allowed out of the house proper.
That said I do usually have 2 dogs under my desk and an assortment of cats on it while working at my computer which is usually me doing CAD/CAM for LR4 projects 
This is Miller. She is RocketHound number 3. We lost our other two a couple years ago and went without a dog for a grand total of 28 days.
Her pound picture made her look like Doby the House Elf. I was not even remotely interested in her until I met her.
Izzy kitty is not allowed in the garage, but she hangs out with me all the time when I’m working on stuff in the house.
She’s a rescue from a reservation, what I call a handle tail tabby. She has a tail that’s perfectly normal if she’s asleep but always curled up over her like a handle if she’s about.
That tail is amazingly expressive and it’s almost as if it is its own creature, just permanently integrated on to a cat.
Below is miss Izzy formal sitting by a painted portrait of her predecessor, Tink.
Izzy has an uncanny understanding of how doors and windows work and can open sliding doors and sliding screen doors and will also push open doors with handles if they’re not fully latched. Usually with an expressive little sound I can’t really describe other that it must be cat for “here I come “
Here’s Izzy hanging out with me. There’s a NUC computer in the background that is now on its way to Ryan to experiment with.
Anyone else suffering from fluffy keyboards? Thinking CNC cut padded semi open Catainer might help contain the fluff
Aww man, been at the vet half the day my cat either has a broken to or is nail split and is slowly growing out. Xrays will reveal all tomorrow when we get the result. Poor guy is limping real bad.
I see a lot of pictures of pets, but not a lot of pets in workshops…
Here’s Skipper. She used to help out in the shop with quality control and mouse extraction. She passed away last Christmas.
She was replaced by Stitch, who showed up on our back porch about a month before Skipper past. He has since taken over supervisory position and mouse extraction.
The other two cats are worthless and pretty much stay in the house. The black dog in this pic passed away about a year before Skipper. She hung out in my shop a lot too and had her own bed in the corner.
Last we have the two border patrol agents. They let me know anytime a leaf moves in the neighbor’s yard. They don’t come in the shop much. They, ironically, don’t like the noise.
