Hoomans. Every few years, you discover something we cats have always known: your offices are terrible. Too bright, too loud, too many motivational posters that say things like “Hang in there!” — featuring, I might add, a cat in a deeply undignified situation.
And now, in a stunning act of unprecedented self-awareness, you’ve decided we should share your workspace.
Bold, misguided, but fine.
Since you clearly cannot be trusted to figure this out on your own, I — Purrnando — have condescended to compile this guide. I have observed you. I have judged you. I have knocked several of your belongings off various surfaces while formulating my conclusions. Below are my findings.
PART ONE: FURNITURE — Finally, Consider Our Claws
Let’s start with the obvious, which apparently is not obvious to you: we will scratch things. This is not a threat. It is not a behavioral problem. It is a biological certainty as reliable as gravity and your inability to close a cabinet door properly.
So when choosing furniture for your shared workspace, pick materials that can survive us. Solid wood. Metal frames. Canvas. Denim. Dense, tightly woven fabrics that don’t snag under a claw like a pulled thread on a sweater unraveling your entire Tuesday.
What you should avoid: velvet, chenille, tweed, anything described by a salesperson as “luxuriously soft.” If it feels expensive and delicate, we will find it within 48 hours and we will make our feelings known.
Also — and pay attention here — consider furniture that serves both of us. Desks with built-in shelving we can occupy. Surfaces at varying heights. You call this “multi-functional.” We call it the bare minimum acknowledgment that we live here too and deserve more than a folded blanket on the floor next to your printer.
🛒 Get this: Feandrea Multi-Level Cat Tree with Condo & Perch — Tall enough to be dignified. Sturdy enough that we won’t wobble when we judge you.
PART TWO: COZY SPOTS — You’re Starting to Get It. Barely.
We require a proper place to rest. Not the floor. Not the cold corner behind your monitor. Not the single folded hoodie you left on the chair in what I can only assume was an accidental act of kindness.
A dedicated cozy zone. Soft. Warm. Preferably elevated. Positioned so we can see both the door and your face simultaneously, because one brings us comfort and the other brings us entertainment.
A proper cat bed — warm, supportive, ideally heated — will reduce your keyboard-sitting incidents by approximately 40%. The remaining 60% is intentional and serves a purpose you are not equipped to understand.
You will notice, once you provide an adequate resting spot, that we do not always use it. This is not ingratitude. This is us reminding you that the bed was never about needing it. It was about you providing it. There is a difference, and it reflects well on you that you tried.
🛒 Get this: K&H Thermo-Kitty Heated Cat Bed — Warmth. Softness. Available at all hours without us having to lower ourselves to asking. Ideal.
PART THREE: VERTICAL SPACES — Now You Are Speaking Properly
You live in two dimensions, shuffling sadly along the floor from desk to kitchen to desk again, occasionally standing up to stretch in a way that suggests you have only recently discovered you have a body.
We live in three.
Height is not a luxury for us. It is not “enrichment,” as you like to say in that tone that implies we are simple creatures who can be satisfied by a cardboard box and some crinkle balls. Height is strategic. It is surveillance. It is the psychological advantage of always being slightly above you, which is where we belong and, frankly, where we have always been in every way that matters.
From a proper perch — wall-mounted shelves, a tall cat tree, a high platform with unobstructed sightlines — we can monitor the room, track movement, assess threats, and observe your Zoom calls in full. Your posture, by the way, is absolutely disgraceful. We have been demonstrating correct spinal alignment for years. You have not been paying attention.
Install the shelves. Build upward. Give us the high ground. You will feel, for the first time, that your office has been properly organized.
🛒 Get these:
- Catastrophic Creations Wall-Mounted Cat Shelves — Named correctly. You will struggle with the drill. We will watch from above. This is the correct dynamic.
- Large Tall Cat Tree with Hammock & Multiple Perches — For the cat who demands a full floor-to-ceiling presence. That is all of us. That is every single one of us.
PART FOUR: THE LITTER BOX — Let Us Not Pretend This Isn’t Awkward For Both Of Us
You sit there in your home office eating crackers loudly, having speakerphone conversations about synergizing deliverables, occasionally saying “can you hear me? you’re on mute” three times in a row, and we are the ones whose natural processes require concealment?
Fine. We accept the terms.
What we will not accept is the following: being made to use a box that has not been scooped. Not yesterday. Not this morning. Today. Recently. With frequency.
Scoop it daily. Change the litter weekly. Place it somewhere private but accessible, not in the corner behind the door that you leave open at an angle that blocks it, not in the room where you run your space heater at full blast, not anywhere that requires us to make a journey and a decision.
A hidden litter enclosure — something built into furniture, disguised as a cabinet, aesthetically neutral — solves the visual problem. Your nose, however, is your own responsibility. That requires scooping, which requires you daily.
This is not a request.
🛒 Get this: Flip Top-Entry Litter Box — Sleek. Contained. Does not look like you’ve hidden a crime scene behind your filing cabinet. Scoop it anyway.
PART FIVE: INTERACTIVE TOYS — Entertain Us or Face What Comes Next
We are not lazy. We are not decorative. We are highly intelligent apex predators who have agreed, through a long and complex historical negotiation, to live indoors with you. In exchange, we require adequate mental stimulation.
If you do not provide it, we will provide it ourselves.
We will locate the one houseplant you actually care about. We will find the single most important cable running behind your desk. We will push your coffee — slowly, deliberately, with complete and sustained eye contact — off the edge of the surface it was resting on.
Not out of malice.
Fine. A little out of malice.
Puzzle feeders make us work for food the way nature intended through effort, cunning, and the satisfaction of a problem solved. Automated toys give us something to chase during the four hours you spend on calls that, and I want to be very clear here, could have been emails.
A stimulated cat is a cat who is not currently destroying something you value. Buy the toys. Schedule the play. Your desk setup will survive the week.
🛒 Get these:
- Nina Ottosson Buggin’ Out Puzzle & Play — 14 treat compartments. We will solve it immediately and then look at you as if to ask what else you’ve got.
- Catit Senses 2.0 Food Tree — We work for our food. Unlike some creatures who open an app and wait 30 minutes.
- SmartyKat Hot Pursuit Automated Toy — Runs without your involvement. A rare hooman innovation we grudgingly respect.
PART SIX: SCHEDULING & BOUNDARIES — You Need This More Than We Do
Here is something nobody seems to tell you directly, so I will: structure your day around us, or we will structure it for you.
We will interrupt your most important meetings. We will yell outside your closed office door with the vocal urgency of a five-alarm emergency that turns out to be, upon investigation, a preference for slightly fresher water in a bowl that is already three-quarters full. We will decide that 2:47pm on a Tuesday is the precise moment you must stop everything and acknowledge us.
This is not chaos. This is management.
Sync our feeding times with your breaks. Build ten minutes of play into your morning and your afternoon. Take your lunch away from your desk like someone who respects themselves. When you take care of our schedule, you inadvertently take care of your own, which you were clearly not doing before given the number of times I have watched you eat crackers over a keyboard at 1pm and call it a meal.
A regular routine produces a calm cat. A calm cat produces a focused hooman. A focused hooman produces better work. We have known this for centuries. You are only now catching up.
🛒 Get this: Automatic Cat Feeder with Timer & App Control — Feeds us on schedule even during your third consecutive Zoom call. We accept this technology. Reluctantly.
THE VERDICT
Install the shelves. Buy the cat tree. Get the puzzle feeder. Hide the litter box and scoop it. You know what happens if you don’t. Put a heated bed in a quiet corner with good sightlines. Set a feeding schedule. Take your breaks.
In return, we will sleep photogenically near your desk. We will occasionally press our head against your hand in what a generous observer might describe as affection. We will keep your office free of any mice that were never there to begin with, and we will refrain from walking across your keyboard for stretches of up to 45 minutes at a time.
This is the agreement.
This is, at this point, no longer your office. It is ours. You have the WiFi password and the delusion of ownership, and we are generously allowing you to remain. You may proceed.
— Purrnando
Affiliate disclosure: if you buy through our links, we earn a small commission. Purrnando has been informed of this and is choosing to be offended that it isn’t larger.