Working from home with a cat sounds peaceful. It is not peaceful. It’s a job with a second, smaller boss.
I work from home. So does Syntax. Only one of us has a job, and it took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t the one I assumed.
Syntax is a tuxedo cat. He came dressed for a board meeting and has behaved accordingly ever since. He has no deliverables, no calendar, and no interest in mine. He does, however, have opinions about how I spend my day, and he delivers them from on top of the keyboard.
His management style
Every bad manager I’ve ever had is in there somewhere.
- He drops by unannounced. Usually when I’ve finally started the thing I’ve been avoiding for three days.
- He sits in on calls he wasn’t invited to. He contributes nothing and leaves tail-first, through the camera.
- He gives feedback without context. A paw on the delete key is a note. I’m supposed to work out what it means.
- He schedules over lunch. His lunch. Mine is apparently flexible.
- He takes credit. Anything I finish, I finished because he supervised.
The thing he gets right
Here’s the annoying part. He’s a terrible manager and an excellent example.
When Syntax is done, he’s done. He doesn’t check one more thing. He doesn’t feel bad about the nap. He doesn’t open the laptop at nine at night to “get ahead.” He stops, finds the warm spot, and commits to it completely.
I, on the other hand, work at a desk that is twelve steps from my bed, which means work is never more than twelve steps away. That’s the trap of working from home when you’re already running low. The office doesn’t close. Nobody turns the lights off on you. You just keep going until the day sort of dissolves.
So when he parks on the keyboard at 4:45, I’ve stopped treating it as an interruption. It’s the only end-of-day signal I’ve got. He isn’t being helpful. He wants dinner. But the effect is the same.
What working from home with a cat taught me to change
- The keyboard sit ends the session. If he’s on it, I save and get up. Arguing with him has never once worked anyway.
- Dinner is the hard stop. His, then mine. The work that’s left will still be there tomorrow, looking exactly as bad.
- I take the breaks he forces. Ten minutes of throwing a crinkle ball down the hall counts as time away from the screen. It may be the only time away I get.
- I save constantly. This one is less about wellbeing and more about him.
None of this fixed burnout. A cat can’t do that, and neither can a list. But it gave the day edges again, and the edges were the part I’d lost.
You’re not broken. You’re just tired, and you have a coworker who has never been tired a day in his life. Take the hint.
Is working from home with a cat worth it?
Yes. Working from home with a cat means your day gets interrupted, and when you’re running on empty, interruption is sometimes the healthiest thing in it. The World Health Organization describes burnout as the result of chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been managed. I manage mine badly. Syntax manages it for me, on his schedule, for his own reasons. I’ll take it. If you have a small supervisor of your own, you already know none of this is optional. You were never going to win the argument about the keyboard anyway.
If any of this sounds like your week, the creative burnout guide is the long version, and the Dispatch is the short one that shows up in your inbox.