Laptops and keyboards are like magnets for your cat. They love nothing more than basking in the heat that your computer generates and destroying any hope of you getting any real work done.

Though I’m grateful to have a couple of furry freeloading felines around during my work day, there’s a real danger that they’ll jump on the keyboard and cause untold misery. Here’s how to deal with that.

Lock Your Computer

Locking your computer quickly takes you back to the login screen, protecting whatever it is you’re working on from wondering paws. To get back to work, you’ll need to log in again using your password (assuming you have one). Unless your cat knows your password, this is probably the simplest way to quickly disable the keyboard.

Mac owners should have a physical key in the top-right corner of their Apple-branded keyboard that locks the computer immediately. It sometimes doubles as a fingerprint reader. You’ll need to hold it for slightly longer than a regular keystroke (a safeguard Apple put in place to prevent accidental taps from locking your computer). Alternatively, the Option+Command+Q keyboard shortcut does the same thing (you’ll also find this under the Apple menu).

Windows users can lock their computers using the Windows+L keyboard shortcut. If your keyboard is fancy and doesn’t have the Windows logo on it, just use the key that you’d normally use to trigger the Start menu.

The same key combination of Super+L (or Windows+L) should work for many Linux distributions too. I tested this in Ubuntu and it worked a treat.

Physical Disconnection or Power Off

If your wireless keyboard has a physical switch on it, you can use it to turn the keyboard off and prevent any additional input. This is the case with Apple’s Magic Keyboard, most Bluetooth keyboards, and many mechanical keyboards too. If your keyboard has multiple modes of operation, switching it to “Wired” when you have no wire attached will achieve the same goal.

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Some wireless keyboards might immediately default to wireless communication when your cable is unplugged, so make sure you know how yours behaves before your cat is able to archive a whole inbox’s worth of notifications in Asana by leaning on the E key.

Wireless Keyboard? Kill the Connection

If you’re using 2.4GHz wireless, you can yank the dongle out of your computer if it’s within reach. If you’re using a Bluetooth keyboard, you can easily prevent further input by killing the connection too.

On a Mac, you can do this by clicking on Control Center and then using the Bluetooth toggle.

This is just as easy on Windows via the system tray, in the bottom right corner of the screen. Click on the small panel that displays the network, speaker, and battery icons then click on the Bluetooth icon.

Many Linux distributions will have a similar solution. For example, in Ubuntu you can click on the area in the top-right corner of the screen and then toggle Bluetooth off with a click.

Many Bluetooth keyboards have multiple profiles, for connecting to different devices. You can trigger these using a keyboard shortcut, like Fn+3. This could also be a handy solution that you can trigger quickly from your keyboard (and then switch back when the coast is clear).

KeyboardCleanTool is a free Mac app that is designed to make it easy to clean your keyboard by locking it. The app is necessary since many MacBook models automatically power up when you start hitting keys.

Best of all, the app has a “Start cleaning mode immediately after starting this app” toggle. That means all you need to do to lock your keyboard is launch the app, something you can do quickly using Spotlight (Command+Spacebar) by starting to type its name.

The app is developed by the author of BetterTouchTool, a Mac productivity app that lets you map all sorts of actions to different inputs. With this, you could use BTT to trigger the cleaning app even faster by mapping a shortcut where you click the top-right corner of your trackpad while holding Command (as an example).

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The best thing about this solution is that it only affects your keyboard. Use your mouse pointer to kill the app or release the keyboard whenever the danger has passed. Keyboard Cleaner is an alternative app that you can use.

CleanMyKeyboard (Windows)

CleanMyKeyboard does the same thing as KeyboardCleanTool except on Windows. All you need to do is download the app and run it. The screen will go black until you type the word “exit” to get out. It’s highly unlikely (but not impossible) that your cat will manage to do this.

The fact that it immediately locks your screen means it’s always ready to go whenever you need it. I’d recommend pinning it to the Windows taskbar if it’s something you’re thinking of using often. Keyboard Clean Tool is an alternative app you might want to use instead.

Laptop User? Close the Lid

If you’re going to be disturbed, you might as well make the most of it. Laptop owners can quickly shut the lid and pause whatever they’re doing to administer some much-needed attention to visiting feline friends. Your cat is way more important than whatever it is you’re doing, and they deserve to be treated as such.

Modern Windows machines handle this far better than they once did, and Mac or Linux users are probably used to simply closing the lid and leaving their laptops alone for hours. Just make sure your friend doesn’t decide to settle down and prevent you from getting anything else done (everyone knows only a monster would disturb a sleeping cat).

Be Cat-Aware at All Times

You should know by now that there’s nothing you can do to prevent an inquisitive, hungry, or attention-starved feline from paying you a visit during your most productive hours. The best you can do is to act quickly to prevent them from erasing an entire spreadsheet or triggering some weird feature via a keyboard shortcut you didn’t know existed.

Is your cat bored? You could try entertaining them with iPhone, iPad, or Android apps instead.

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