Protect your Mac from felines

CatNip

protects your Mac from your cat. It will automatically block the keyboard when it senses a cat walking on it.

If you have a feline friend at home, you know exactly what it’s like. Every now and then your cat will happen to jump onto your keyboard (as if not on purpose!). If your Mac is turned on and you have some documents open this can be particularly annoying. You can have your Mac automatically lock or use CatNip for a more playful way of protecting your Mac from your cat.

You can set different alerts on CatNip: a beep, a display message or have the desktop fade out. Also make sure you adjust the sensitivity, so that CatNip does actually activate itself when your cat pounces on your keyboard. So CatNip only offers limited features, but at least it gives you a choice of three different alerts.

CatNip is an application for Mac OS X which can alert you and block your Mac, when your cat jumps on the keyboard.

When I am using my computer, my cat often walks across the keyboard. Sometimes she renames files, selects and deletes text—once, she replied to an email. This became such a problem that I had to unplug my keyboard whenever I left my home.

But then, I developed CatNip—a program which, while running, detects “cat-like typing” and locks the keyboard, usually in under a half second. Optionally, CatNip will fade your desktop and display a warning message to your cat (which is of dubious value, since if your cat can read, your cat can probably type, too).