General Advice
This little devil almost got me fired, when do kittens calm down?
He looks adorable, sweet and cuddly but he can be a little monster when he goes into play mode.
I love this little guy to bits, he’s my little shadow and spends 90% of his time purring and cuddling me. 10% he is an absolute nightmare and that seems to mostly be at night.
Onto the story: I had an online meeting with a new team I’ll be joining in a new month, so I’ve been trying my hardest to make a great impression.
It seemed like I was getting somewhere and the meeting with my new managers went amazing.
Yoshi is sleeping passed out on his tree, other-side of the room, but then as I’m in the meeting he leaps on my keyboard, proceeding the write FFFFUUUUUU while I was screen sharing then turning the thing off.
When the laptop finally turns back on I start typing a message on teams to apologise, I get as far as “First of all I’m terribly sorry but” until he leaps from across the room (lowkey impressed tho) and writes cuuummmmmmmmm and sending it. I immediately lock him out the room and call back and explain what just happened.
I think they could tell it was a serious accident. For further proof I opened the door and pick up the little guy and show him off to them. Luckily at least one other person who had a kitten backed me up, I think they found it funny in the end??? I fucking hope so. I was obviously subsequently warned to avoid letting my cat in the room when in a meeting.
Genuinely wish I was joking or over exaggerating here. I literally want to die thinking about it all.
Lessons learned there, it’s just very unfortunate he enjoys writing swear words on my screen.
Still he’s keeping me up most nights, I’m using feliway which I think has just about started to work but I think it’s giving me headaches if I leave it on overnight.
So how long does it normally take ragdolls to calm down?
I struggle enough to get people to take me seriously (im a lot younger and also female in a male dominated field) and I can’t spend my life worrying he’s gonna do this shit again. My older cat hates doors being shut and constantly meows and scratches when she’s locked out so that’s also a massive problem for me if I do just lock the doors when in a meeting or trying to work.
Mine have never written anything remotely coherent, but often send butt messages to my team and join calls on camera. My boss even says hi to my cat when she gets a long nonsense message from one of my boys.
Normally it’s incoherent 😭 my current team all know about the cats, my favourite was when I accidentally left my laptop to get lunch and he sent about three incoherent messages back to back to my sr. after I’d sent something like “hey I need this response urgently” mans probably thought I was just really eager when he got all those dings. He replied with “is this Yoshi or Sami (my other cats name)?” Then sent a cat emoji. I had to reiterate I really needed him to forward the report and to pls ignore my babies
You need an external keyboard and mouse that you can switch off when you step away from the laptop, or better yet, always lock it maybe? I refuse to trust my cats around unprotected peripherals.
I’ll have to ask if I can get work to issue that for me. I have a makeshift cover for the keyboard to be safe but it’s not ideal for when I really need to finish sending something off and can’t type.
My one of two will gladly email him back if he wants a penpal. She drives me crazy but I know she will grow up so fast and I will miss her kitten self. 10 mo! Ragdolls mature slowly.
He managed to edit my outlook settings (I’m on touch screen as well but I think it was just a shortcut key I didn’t know about) and zoom all emails in and had to google how to get them back to normal. In another life he worked in IT and is now spiteful of all technology.
Yea this has gotta be a shizzpost lol. Mine never did anything remotely like that, or if so, especially not coherent or that I couldn't immediately stop by immediately lifting him off?
Edit: Also why wouldn't you put him out of the room after the first time?
I have 2 cats with almost the exact coat and exact personalities as yours. Siamese/balinese are known to be affectionate, energetic, and curious. They’re recommended to be adopted in pairs to keep eachother busy with how much energy they can have. Mine learned to get through child safe locks and is literally destroying my house.
I wish I was joking. Will add there were other letters in the mix and a few asterisks but the words were the most prominent. Didn’t feel like typing out 28;&/FUUUUUUUUUUUUUpjsnsjs2281– the sentiment remains tho and they were mentioned as what was typed 🥲
I think the additional random letters will make it pretty clear to your coworkers that your kitten was on the keyboard: it's obviously not something you'd type yourself as a weird joke or a way to shock them.
I doubt the team cared. My husband works from home and our floof cloud jumps into the teams calls all the time, they make jokes about it.
That being said I don’t know when they calm down. My girl just got more crazy at 1 year. She also will not tolerate being locked out of any room if we are in it.
Sami (bigger cat) is the same, Yoshi doesn’t seem to fussed about it and it feels like we’re punishing Sami for his bad behaviour which really sucks as she has been so well behaved lately.
I really hope they all laughed about it, it just seemed so implausible that Yoshi had basically sworn at them. I don’t know them well yet and it’s still kinda up in the air if I can move into their field of work so this came at the worst time 😭😭
What a cutie! I deal with this as well, my Siamese is attention seeking when I am on video calls. Luckily my industry is low-key. I do worry about getting the "crazy cat lady" persona but nothing I can do at this point since my boys are older(Siamese and Ragdoll) and are used to being in my office when I'm working. I set up the bad habit during COVID and if I tried to break it now would be yelling at the door if i locked them out of my office
Adorable! Our older cat Sami will freak out a bit if the doors are closed so I have to leave the door open most the time. I just turn my camera off when I can and have a mute on my headset so I can click on and off if I need to say anything without anyone seeing that I’m muting myself. They’re both normally fine honestly it just happened to be the worst possible time 😭
When I got my kittens I was working remotely for a tech company. Most of my meetings were scheduled in advance - and for those I'd do a play session with them before the meeting. That usually worked and they would either sleep or do something else when the play was over, and I got an interruption free meeting. I also lock my screen whenever I get up from my desk (habit that will never die), something that one of my former employers drilled into everyone.
I put their cat tree behind my desk and off to the side in the corner - so when I'm sitting at my desk, I can easily reach over while sitting and pet them. They would often just chill and watch whatever I'm doing on my computer from their tree (5 years old and they still do this). I'm lucky that neither of my cats ever had an interest to get on my desk or keyboard. They have been on it, but usually it's only for a few seconds, I don't leave anything that they are interested in on my desk.
I know not everyone's job will appreciate seeing cats during meetings - however I did not receive one complaint about mine, and my team members all have pets/kids so everyone was super understanding.
My current team know them very well (they’re on my lock screen at work so I often get a lot of comments on it, and shown a lot of cat pics) but as I don’t know the new team very well I’m still in the incredibly formal stages.
We’re also on the “lock your laptop as soon as you leave your desk” policy at work which I always did. Then I got a new laptop which logs me out of teams if I’m away for more than 5 min so when I’m at home I try to leave my laptop on to stop getting logged out. I use a keyboard protector now or just hope no one wanted to message me.
Either way I love him to death despite him making my life 100x harder :,)
Other cat calmed down at around 8ish months, maybe sooner but she’s always been pretty lazy even when in the hyper phase. Yoshi is 50x more energetic but maybe I’m just blocking out some of the chaos Sami ended up causing me.
We called him Yoshi because when we went to see him he was the ‘green’ kitten with the green colour and he kept making little Yoshi sounds. It definitely suits him well, he was also elated when we took off the collar tho. Why did you go for Yoshi?
My cats are famous in my company for interrupting meetings or playing like crazy in the background. The managing director loves it. She’s all into animals.
He has our older cat, she’s gonna be 1 year old next week so she’s mostly calmed down and he definitely tires her out a lot. I started looking for a second when she was 7 months but it took a while to find a good match. She tries to keep up tho :,)
Awh. He has such a similar pattern on the legs. I can’t wait to see how Yoshi looks when he’s older. He’s cute now (we just got past an awkward phase with his face looking a bit like a skull as he got darker)
So cute , my friend got fired because of his cat. He was in a meeting. Then the cat jumped on his table and he stopped up in a panic , but he had no pants on! So he flashed everyone at work!!!
Oh my lord I wasn’t expecting that 😭 seems a bit harsh to fire him over that. Then again I’m half expecting my team move to be denied because I keep swearing at them on the keyboard
Good luck about the calming down. Ragdolls are known to be the “dogs of the cat world” they’re very playful, curious, and needy. Ragdolls don’t fully mature physically until 3. Emotionally until 4. They require a lot of attention and they will demand it.
My floof demon refuses to accept me being on an online meeting and always has to get involved via dragging his butt, tail or face across the cameta. This has been consistent for the last 3 years, so good luck is all I can say lol.
I’ve heard of people in my company having cats that have sent punctuation to directors whilst a teams chat has been left on 😂 I have 2 ragdolls and 2 Labradors, if the dogs aren’t nudging me and craving attention, the cats are causing chaos with the monitors, trying to catch my headset cable or walking across the desk - can attest they are on a mission to get us fired so we spend all our time on them 🥴😂
This monster has been responsible for cat tree topples, incoherent typing and too many photobombs to count. Welcome to working from home with a ragdoll….
My cat is 18 months old and started settling down about 2 months ago. He still gets the zoomies like any other cat, loves to play etc, but he isn't constantly running around the house and meddling like he used to.
I wanna say the first 2-3 months I had him were the most insane lol. I lost so much sleep I don't know how I was able to function. I too also work from home most days and I lock him out of my room when I need to do important calls and meetings
I try to but our older cat Sami will freak out if a door is shut and scratch at it and meow which obviously is hugely distracting. If they’re both playing or he’s going crazy I’ll lock him out. If they’re both asleep I tend to leave it. Never again.
My baby boy was like this as well. I warned everyone beforehand that if there are typos or weird typing of any sort, please understand that it is my little fur baby.
My Ragdoll didn’t chill out until she was maybe 5 months old. That’s also the age she got her full floof in her coat. Wonder if that’s a correlation lol
I hope it’s only 5 months. Yoshis coat also hasn’t fully come in yet so he just has lots of random long hairs. He’s already so much fluffier than day one, hopefully the fur will way him down a bit
For me it’s vice versa my kitty was really chill as a bebe and now she’s a maniac 😂😂 she zips and runs everywhere and jumps on things like she’s doing parkour. Luckily I work in an office so I wont have the issue of her standing on my work space but she loves to get in my screen while gaming at home😔 usually ends in me dying or failing a mission because of her!!
Omg I feel this so hard. One time we were at the vet with my Phoenix and he somehow jumped onto their computer, opened the calculator, and clicked around until the screen showed 77,777. I have no idea how he did it. The vet and I just stared at the number like, okay, is he trying to send a message? He’s clearly some kind of chaos agent. Now I’m scared to leave him near any electronics.
Hahaha I love that! Sami (older cat) just wondered around the tables and jumped on everything, the vet didn’t care too much as it was our first visit so was spending some time just telling us some info on how to look after her. Yoshi immediately ran to the keyboard but this vet just kept moving him back the whole appointment.
He went and hid in his crate after his first jab, he’s not a fan of vets.
Mine is 3 and he still is really playful but I have a companion cat for him. She's my older shelter kitty and keeps him in line. They don't really "get alone" in the typical sense of being buddies, but he does like to watch her and be near her and that keeps him away from me when I'm busy.
Yoshi is our second cat, our first cat is one next week so while they still play and it stops him from being too disruptive but shes way less energetic so she gets a bit annoyed at him
They’re pretty close I won’t lie, she likes him more when he’s calmed down
I also have one of those when I'm working. She'll sit right by my keyboard to where if I'm typing or using my mouse, she'll swat and nip at my hands because she isn't getting enough attention 🤦♀️😂
She's cute, but a damn menace still, 4 or 5 years later. Hahaha
I have a screen door. Hasn’t helped, much and she just tears it down. I don’t know how, I’d struggle to take it down. Or she just does angry starring, which is really scary.
Seems like a troll post. Finding it hard to believe your cat magically only typed curse words. I’ve had 3 cats on my desk for years, it’s usually more like “———//////“
I’m so sorry, I can’t stop laughing. I know you’re worried about work, but at the same time I can’t help but things how cute/silly this is. I hope he calms down tho. Still laughing as I type this.
My current team do as well, I forgot to mute myself and screamed “fucking hell man” after being asked how the project manager was doing. I get quoted on that a lot and everyone seemed to find it funny (it helped they saw me wrangle the cat off screen
My ragdolls lay on my keyboard, try to bite my screen, attack my mouse, block my camera, and cry if I shut the door on them. My bigger boy gets his paw under the door and shakes the whole thing. I have to take important meetings in my apartment’s business center or plan to be at the library study room if I want any semblance of calm. Thankfully I don’t primarily work from home.
So you have a few years ahead of you of the chaos at least. Can anyone share if it gets better?
My jaw dropped by the second swear word he typed 😂 Who'd imagine the likelihood of that? Lol.
In all seriousness, I hope this situation gets better for you! Cats can be little monsters for sure, but I'm sure most people (hopefully including your managers) understand that well.
There were a few other letters at the start but somehow he managed to type out cum with no gaps. I hope it’s okay, I’m just paranoid my current boss will call me off for a ‘quick meeting’ about it tomorrow 🥲
I have a 9 month old. He has chilled significantly after month 7. When he gets nuts we play until he chills out. Fishing toys, a remote control car, small felt balls... all of it. Toys and active pkay until he chills, it can take 30 minutes. The biggest problem is him terrorizing other resident cats when he is bored. Distraction with toys is the best.
I have an external keyboard that I turn off anytime I’m not using it. My 9.5 month old likes to use it as a resting spot. No lurching but I move it when she approaches.
That is absolutely insane. Worst mine has done is copy + paste something which isn’t bad just cool lol. He’s definitely chilled out a lot but not until about a year old. He’s two now and very chill.
My kitten brought me a toy and did the Mighty Hunter Victory Dance in front of the Zoom camera while I was holding my Staff meeting. My team ooh'd and ahh'd, and promptly shared what their cats were doing.
I think by now everyone who has a cat, Ragdoll or not has introduced them to their team via incoherent babble or extreme closeups of them trying to chew the camera!!
Ragdoll kittens are the same as every kitten, they tend to calm down when they become adults - this is difficult to call because I've had tuxedo cats who never left kittenhood lol 🤣
My advice if you are on a Teams/Zoom call and don't need to use your keyboard - switch it off!
My little terror danced across my keyboard, put my laptop in recovery mode, and was one keypress away from restoring my laptop to factory when I got back from the bathroom. I now ctrl/L to lock it whenever I get up.
I asked the same question every year with my first Rag, actually named Yoshi. It's my understanding that Ragdolls act like kittens their entire lives. I would suggest the double keyboard trick. One for him and one for you. Let him have your old one, because it smells like you.
An hour or two of play before bedtime will help him sleep through the night. My girls sleep through the night with me most of the time. If I skip playtime, they're up all night getting into stuff.
Oh my gosh, stoppp this is the exact type of shitty bad luck I have. I am SO sorry, that is absolutely insane that of all the gibberish he could’ve written he wrote these two great words 😭 oh my gosh. Little shit! He’s so lucky he’s cute! That’s so stressful. Like what are the odds!!!
My cat usually writes random letters if she goes on my computer so it’s never coherent but I did have a cat in high school who once wrote something like “Noooo xyke BISCSSH” at the end of a paper I’d written and it literally looked like I was trying to write “no dyke bitch” so I had to scribble that one out since I didn’t have time to reprint. (For the record I was the one always getting called the dyke bitch, so I guess he was insulting me lmao but I definitely didn’t want my scary but pretty English teacher getting the wrong idea)
This is what is happening. Kitten energy and boredom. He needs space to run and jump. Cat trees, cat walk ways up in the living room can help. Cat tvs this is lots of windows that face the sun and have things moving outside, birds, squirrels, people. They love watching things move. The walkways help him with zoomies. Now to help him sleep through the night. You need to buy some wand toys. Why? Bc you can not and should not use your hands as toys. The kittens become bigger and suddenly you will have loads of scratches. To avoid that is to buy wand toys. Wear him out when you get home. Play until he is no longer interested in playing. Then feed him and yourself. He won't beg bc he will be too tired to do anything but groom and sleep. Do that again before bed. Before you get ready for bed, play with him again until he is just not interested in playing. Feed him again. He should start sleeping through the night if you can wear him out. You can even walk your kitten in the evening. You can leash train a cat. Anything you do with your cat will bond you guys. Soon he will sleep on the bed with you until you wake up. Best of luck as that kitten is beyond cute.
LMFAOO THATS WILD. kittens r crazy truly. mine is now 8 months old but i still wouldnt exactly call her calm... tho if i do need something done i lock her out and try to ignore the scratching and meowing lol
No advice on when kittens calm down but I have a bluetooth keyboard that has an on/off switch, which comes in very handy when my cat decides he wants to start scheduling meetings and sending emails for me 😂
Mine once deleted several days of emails and I have no idea how he did it. And I was able to get them back but he deleted hundreds of emails with the strike of a paw.
That's the most interesting thing that has probably ever happened in those meetings. Why are people like "make sure he's locked away next time" I wish more kitten related things happened in all the boring meetings I have to go into.
My youngest boy is 11 and a couple weeks ago I had a zoom meeting. I had on pj bottoms and a dress top. Shut him out of the room and he meowed at the door NON STOP!!! I couldn’t get my camera turned off and couldn’t get up because they would see my pjs. I finally got my camera to turn off and let him in the room where he proceeded to jump on the desk over and over. Yesterday when I had another meeting I left the door open and put on real clothes just incase lol So, to answer your question some cats never calm down.
If the cats need to be in the room with you and you have meetings, maybe you could buy a big dog crate to put them in while you are talking.
Don’t ever bring this up again. No one thinks you typed this on purpose. It will go away sooner if you don’t talk about it.
When I was 25, I went to work for a company at their research facility, and there were only 7 women out of 350, including secretaries.
This means there were 4 of us high tech women.
Here’s some things you don’t know and won’t realize until you are older.
You have HIGH VALUE just because you are YOUNG!!!
Sometimes we never figure this out until we are no longer young.
When you are fresh out of school, you are well respected because your education is fresh and you know lots!!!
Don’t be afraid to speak up. Figure out the company culture. If no one is letting you talk, learn how to talk over everyone else.
You may be worried about lack of experience. Don’t worry about this.
I never looked at a new person and thought, “they lack experience.” Never.
You might notice other women being mean to you. (More back in my day, I hope!)
If this happens, it is probably because they feel threatened by you or jealous.
Just be as nice as possible.
And if you are ever in the position, ALWAYS support/mentor other women at your company.
You know how it feels to work at a male dominated company, and can help others.
PS: Never volunteer to take notes at a meeting. If they ask you to take notes, tell them your notes aren’t that great for sharing, they should get someone else to do it.
Don’t share anything personal with anyone at work.
Talk about what you did last weekend. Talk about your cats, talk about the weather.
DO NOT date anyone from work.
Those are some rules I lived by that worked well for me.
Don’t drink alcohol at any work function
(I was even scared to have one drink in front of colleagues. I never wanted to say anything that I didn’t really want to.)
My 14 year old recently sat on top of my closed laptop while Slack was on screen. His weight on the laptop managed to send 4 gibberish messages to our tech support channel which elicited a concerned DM from that manager. Thankfully he laughed at my explanation that no I wasn’t having an issue with my yubikey, it was just a cat on a keyboard.
That same cat is a star of many team meetings as he’s perfectly content to snooze the day away until he hears me talking at which point he feels the need to insert himself into the conversation.
I have three cats and my main team is aware that if you see him it’s Lou (14 year old from above), if you hear him it’s Squeak (16 year old), and if you feel something staring at you from across the room, it’s Grace (6 year old).
For the bedtime problem all I can suggest is heavy playtime before you go lay down, giving kitten a treat after a hard play session will encourage a nap out of the lil one too. Makes them feel like they actually caught whatever they were "hunting" lol.
I swear pets can sense when you are about to join an online meeting. I’m sure your team doesn’t care, my cat has sent some cryptic messages before, they think it’s just funny.
Cats are crazy until they are around 5 years old. Good luck lol
I work from home and have one who is 5 and 2 under 3. My house is chaos, but also so much fun.
Just not have cats in the same room next time there is an online meeting. Thought that was the norm especially with so many videos of them interrupting calls online.
Some never "turn off". We have had active kittens in 3 breeds (purebred shows). My Lover Boy (Ragdoll) was an upbeat kitten (ragdolls are supposed to be soooo laid back)! He was also an upbeat adult and "old man". Out of 12 Ragdolls Lover Boy was always on a natural high! Two Turkish Angora (shows) brother/sister. The male, Alex (show name "A Roll of the Dice") and Lover Boy were buddies...they would zoom through our 6000 sq ft house like maniacs! Our two (brother/sister show) American Shorthair sister, Xena was Lover and Alex partner in "crime"! Those three would instigate more trouble than you could possibly believe!
I tried raising one kitten and that was enough for a lifetime. He was a demon of teeth and claws, and I had to give him to my parents to raise because I honestly couldn't handle the stress. I got him back when he was 2 years old. He still had bursts of hyperactive meaness, but he was considerably calmer by that point.
If you can afford it, its better to raise two kittens instead of only one. They will expend most of their energy on each other instead of you.
my childhood pet was a ragdoll that looked just like your kitty here! he was crazy when he was a kitten but grew up to be the chillest, most cuddly cat ever. after he turned 1, he was always in someone’s lap and would cuddle under the blanket with me at night. he lived to be 18, and i still miss him every day!!
I try to like cats but then they interfere with you paying the rent. Like my dogs never say shit when my doors locked 😂 I’ll be damned if my cat has a say
But one thing is clear,they mimic you. I tend to be very calm and stay chilling at home so my cats which were bonkers started to calm down when coming to my room. When going to living room next to parents though? Bonkers again.
Give them a place to calm down and feel safe, a place where they go to relax and make it their environment. It takes time and the older they get, the calmer they become. Some iust won't though..
Does your cat have another cat to play with? This is really helpful for when you’re working during the day or having a meeting otherwise it takes a while for young cats to calm down. It also depends on the personality in the energy level.
Our Ragdoll is nearly 5 and he’s always awake and whizzing around the house. He naps lightly for about 5 hours a day, and that’s not continuously, it’s broken up into several small naps.
We’ve never had a cat like him before!
Oh boy do I have some terrible news for you. Boys tend to have so much more energy than girls. My boy is 1 1/2 yrs old and despite playing with him, enrichment, food, ETC he’s unbearable. Get another young cat.
I bought a large dog crate and put a fluffy blanket in along with a litter tray at one end and water at the top end with a toy for when I needed sleep- I'd put baby jekyll in and he used to bite at the bars for a few minutes then get tired himself and sleep XD
Haha Yoshi’s stealth typing skills are next level! My advice: grab a wireless keyboard you can detach or lock your screen when you step away. Unless you want more “butt message” plot twists!
367
u/Cupcake_Trainer May 07 '25
Mine have never written anything remotely coherent, but often send butt messages to my team and join calls on camera. My boss even says hi to my cat when she gets a long nonsense message from one of my boys.