I was assisting in one of our online workshops from home recently. After my cat’s morning nap, he decided to join me. My laptop had been on for quite some time and was warm. So Bailey, of course, decided that was where he wanted to sit.

When I am working from home, I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse attached to the laptop, so I didn’t really mind that he was sitting on it. However, the laptop keyboard still was active, so the folks attending the workshop saw something like this:

Luckily he didn’t hit manage to step on enter again after he proceeded to type in an entire paragraph of c’s.

So what can you do about this?

There are a couple programs out there that will detect cat-like typing. The most popular seems to be PawSense, available at: http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/. PawSense detects cat-like typing, stops further entry and plays a sound annoying to cats. However, there are three issues for me:

1. There isn’t a Windows 10 version of it.
2. It costs around 20 dollars.
3. You still have to get the cat off the keyboard to be able to use the computer.

There are also low tech options like putting the keyboard at an angle. You could try to train your cat not to walk on your keyboard using something like the How to Get Your Cat to Stop Jumping on Your Keyboard Wiki.

I wanted to see if I could do something with just the settings on my computer.

Changing behavior of computer when shutting the lid

It is possible to change what happens when you close the lid of a laptop.

1. To change the behavior of a windows computer when closing the lid, press the window key and s.
2. Search for power options, click the item that appear in the results.
3. In the list of options to the left, click “Choose what closing the lid does”.
4. Change the option for “When I close the lid” to Do nothing.

This changes the setting for all the power plans. If you want to change it for a particular plan, look at the directions available in this How To Keep Laptop Running With the Lid Closed article.

Disabling Touch Screen

That said, while I was in the workshop I realized I needed to do a bit more if I wanted to let the cat hang out on the laptop. At some point, I put my hand on top of the lid of the laptop, and that accidentally opened a program. The problem was that the touch screen was still active, and my touch on the back side of the screen was registered. I found that I could choose to disable the touch feature of my screen.

1. To disable the touch screen, press the window key and s.
2. Search for device manager, and click the link for it that appears in the results.
3. Click Yes to the User Account Control dialog box asking, “Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?”
4. Find the Human Interface Devices group and expand it.
5. Look for a device called something like “HID-compliant touch screen,” right click the device, and click Disable.
6. You then see a window asking if you are sure you want to disable the device. Click Yes to this.

So if you have a cat, you probably know what happen once I had figured this out. Yep, Bailey decided to lay down, away from the laptop, on the blanket I put on the desk for him before I started assisting the workshop.