There's a specific thing that happens when you're deep in a problem — properly deep, the kind where you forget to eat and you look up and it's dark outside — and a cat just appears and sits on you. It's very hard to explain why that helps. But it does.
The Claws work schedule
Claws has her own interpretation of my working hours. She doesn't care that I'm mid-compile or halfway through debugging something. If she's decided it's sit-on-Theo time, it's sit-on-Theo time. The keyboard is irrelevant. The screen is irrelevant. She has assessed the situation and determined that the correct action is to be directly on top of me, and that's what's happening.
Why it actually helps
Coding can be quite isolating, especially when you work alone and most of your communication is text-based. Having something alive in the room that isn't a screen makes a real difference to the general atmosphere of a working day. Claws doesn't care about the code. She cares about whether there's a laser to chase and whether it's warm enough where you're sitting. That complete indifference to the work is genuinely grounding.
On the harder days — the ones where nothing's working and the compile errors are stacking up and motivation is low — she's just there. Not doing anything, just existing nearby. It's a small thing and also somehow not a small thing at all.
The debugging incidents
There have been several occasions where Claws has walked across the keyboard and introduced genuinely confusing characters into code I was editing. This is less helpful. She has also, on at least one occasion, sat directly on the trackpad and clicked something. What she clicked remains unknown. The file was recovered.
Worst coworker. Best coworker. Both simultaneously. That's Claws.