Does your cat like to lounge on your keyboard or printer? Use your cables as chew toys? A gazillion Flickr photos suggest this is normal. Still, if you’d like to save your expensive electronics from your pet, Wired offers these strategies.
Photo by dougwoods.
Understanding cats’ crazy minds as best we can — especially that they don’t like sudden, loud noises and sticky stuff on their paws — can help develop a plan of action. Of the several suggested approaches, including setting up motion-detection alarms and setting traps that startle cats when they get near your gear, the two-sided tape strategy method looks easiest: Photo by Brad Moon, Wired.com.
The classic method is to apply two-sided tape directly to any surface you want to keep cats off of. They jump up, find their paws are sticking, immediately decide that it’s not cool, and jump off. […]
I used a variation on the two-sided tape method, designed to avoid the issue of adhesives on gear. Cut pieces of paper to fit the areas you want to protect. Apply strips of two-sided tape to the top of the paper. Use masking tape (easy to remove and no residue) on the other side to gently attach the paper to the surface. Voila, you have effective cat protection.
Thanks to the masking tape, there’s no damage to surfaces and it takes only seconds to remove everything if you’re having company over and don’t want to explain why there’s sticky paper all over your stereo. I apply paper strips on the desk surface to discourage jumping up there and directly to the top of several key, heat-generating pieces of equipment that seem to be cat magnets.
Read through to the whole article for more tips on applying this strategy and how to prevent cats from electrocuting themselves when they chew on electrical cords.
Have you managed to tame your cat’s tech curiosity? If so, how’d you do it?
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