desktop-cat

Project Overview

Desktop Cat is a pixel cat living on your Windows desktop. She idles, stretches, dances and frolics on her own, and occasionally reminds you to take a break. Pet her and she responds while affection slowly grows; she remembers where she lives and how often you petted her, staying put after restarts.

The program ships as a single portable file with no networking, no uploads, no telemetry, no registry writes and no admin rights. Code is MIT licensed, while the character art comes from OpenGameArt under CC-BY 3.0 attribution.

Item	Value
Platform	Windows 10 / 11
Form	single-file portable (unzip and run)
Network	fully offline
License	code MIT, art CC-BY 3.0

A desktop pixel cat with affection: pet her and she responds, and she waits for you after every reboot.

Key Features

• Autonomous animations: 12 animations including idling, stretching, dancing and frolicking, with rest reminders
• Petting interaction: stroking her head or body raises affection, streaks trigger cheers, and touching the tail lowers it
• Affection system: capped at 400 across 6 levels from stranger, familiar, friend, good friend, best friend to heart friend, shown on a progress bar at her feet
• Drag and recenter: drag her around, double-click to return to screen center, and she sometimes walks toward your clicks
• Quiet mode: no bubbles, no spontaneous animation changes, no rest reminders, while interactions keep working
• Position lock: prevents accidental drags, and both toggles persist across runs
• Local data: position, affection and interaction counts live in the .petdata folder beside the program, delete it for factory reset
• Menu controls: right-click for stats and art credits, full animation preview and affection reset

Target Audience

• Office workers and students wanting desktop company
• Fans of virtual pets and desktop widgets
• Privacy-minded users demanding zero-network software
• Break-takers looking for a light toy to pet occasionally

Quick Start

1. Download the DesktopCat zip and extract the whole folder to a writable directory
2. Double-click DesktopCat.exe, choosing More info → Run anyway on the first SmartScreen prompt
3. Pet her head to raise affection, or use the scroll wheel to adjust the score and watch levels
4. Right-click the cat or tray icon for the menu, enabling quiet mode or position lock as you like
5. Press Esc to quit, position and affection save automatically

Core Advantages

• Zero network, zero residue: no networking code, no telemetry, no registry writes, deleting the folder fully uninstalls
• Portable single file: unzip and run, no extra runtime needed
• Persistent state: position and affection survive restarts, companionship accumulates
• Open and transparent: MIT code with CC-BY credited art, and the global hook behavior is readable in source

System Requirements

Item	Requirement
OS	Windows 10 / 11
Runtime	built-in PowerShell 5.1 and .NET Framework suffice
Permissions	no admin needed, program folder must be writable
Network	not required at all

Notes

• Avoid Program Files: the read-only system folder makes her forget position and affection, use writable spots like Documents or Desktop
• SmartScreen prompt: without a purchased code-signing certificate the first run warns once, it is not a virus alert
• Mouse hook explained: a read-only global hook checks mouse position for petting, recording and sending nothing, though some antivirus tools may flag it
• Art license differs: code is MIT and commercial use is fine, but the character art is CC-BY 3.0 and CREDITS.txt must be kept when redistributing