Working from home with a Maine Coon isn’t remote working. It’s sharing an office with a large, fluffy, highly opinionated “supervisor” who contributes nothing, takes everything, and somehow remains the most important person in the building.
1. Uninvited guest at Zoom meetings
Forget it. Your Maine Coon will appear on camera like an uninvited senior executive demanding to know why nobody has offered him a biscuit.
2. The keyboard conundrum
It will no longer be yours but it will be a heated luxury cat bed, complete with occasional random keystrokes.
3. Water with cat spit-back
Your fresh, chilled glass of water will mysteriously gain a floating fur coat and maybe a whisker or two. Your cat will definitely have had a quick slurp despite having a perfectly good bowl right beside it.
4. There is such a thing as a free lunch
… to a cat that is. Unfortunately, you are the only one who didn’t know this. Still, it helps to reduce your waistline.
5. Musical chairs
You’ll lose every time. Leave your chair for 30 seconds and it will be occupied by 10 kilos of magnificent fluff. Good luck negotiating its return. But you know – standing as you work is a health craze.
6. Well-timed vomitting
A perfectly respectable working day can be derailed by a short warning yowl, a couple of deep retching noises and the splatter of vomit on the office floor precisely at the moment you’re on an important call with your boss.
7. Loud interuptions
During the most crucial phone conversation expect a full-volume MEOWWWW directly beside your head, followed by complete silence and an innocent expression.
8. Loss of power to all devices
USB cables are apparently the Maine Coon equivalent of spaghetti. Especially the expensive ones. Keep plenty of spares or pay the price of being unable to charge your devices until the next Amazon delivery.
9. Where is my phone?
Your phone will vanish and you’ll hear its muffled ringing but not be able lay eyes in it. During a frantic search, your Maine Coon will watch smuggly like a master criminal with it safely hidden beneath his ample fluffy belly.
10. The gravity tester
Anything you put on your desk will becomes an obstacle course. Pens, notebooks, paperwork, mouse… all subject to immediate feline relocation to the floor, just to prove gravity is still a thing.
11. The chief distractor
Need to concentrate? Your cat will suddenly require urgent emotional support, preferably delivered through extensive stroking.
12. You’ll never complete any task on time
If you’re foolish enough to announce, “I’ve only got one more thing to finish,”… congratulations. You have just announced the beginning of Playtime O’Clock. Give up working – there’s always tomorrow.