Kind of a silly question if you don’t provide any selection criteria. You can literally use just about any USB keyboard or mouse you want.

Yeah. Ozzy doesn’t mind being picked up for brief periods but he will not sit in a lap. Occasionally he might jump up on the sofa and curl up next to someone but this is the closest he gets to sitting ON anyone. He might snuggle up at night except our older cat has staked out the bedroom as her territory and will always chase him out.

While my family is on holiday break from school and work, I hooked my deck up to the TV and we’ve been playing our way through Sunderfolk. It’s a tactical RPG. The deck hosts the game and everyone gets to join and control their character with their phone. It runs great.

One of the lesser known applications for VR is for seated simulation type games. I personally have spent hundreds of hours playing games like Elite Dangerous, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and a few racing titles in VR. The sense of presence from VR makes them far more immersive and actually improves situational awareness.

The top end Quest 3 has an msrp of $500. They can often be found with a discount or used for less. I paid $300 for mine. That’s a pretty difficult price point to beat.

It actually works very well as a PCVR headset. What you need to understand is that it does not work as a dedicated display like traditional headsets do. You have to run a program on your PC that streams the display data to the headset over either a USB or wifi connection. An app on the headset receives and decodes the stream. There are some tradeoffs involved in doing it that way but it works surprisingly well for many use cases. I use mine over wifi with the third party streaming app Virtual Desktop. It’s shockingly smooth and the display quality is very good.

The next thing you should understand is that the Steam Frame is designed to work in exactly the same way for PCVR. That said, I am hopeful it will be more optimized and a smoother ux than a quest due to Valve’s priority on PC gaming. The fact that they include a dedicated 6ghz wifi dongle should give it a significant advantage in both stability and bandwidth. But I expect it will cost more. Probably a lot more. For my part I will have to decide if the benefits outweigh the price difference.

Thing that worked for us (may or may not work for you): put packing tape or (better) double-sided tape over the area of the couch your cat scratches. Put an approved scratcher they like to use nearby. Ideally right next to the area they’ve been scratching. You can reinforce even stronger if you give treats when they use the correct scratcher.

Android is already a Linux-based OS.

Allergies can change over time, and also can become more severe with repeated exposure. You can consult with an allergy specialist to get tested and some advice, but there are a few suggestions here already that should help alleviate symptoms. The biggest one is probably to change and wash your sheets frequently (like at least weekly). And use a wash cycle with hot water.

There are lots of options for allergy medication, too. I have really bad pollen allergies, but I’ve been using Nasacort daily for many years now, and they hardly bother me at all except a little at peak season.

If you think you can manage it, regularly bathing your cat will reduce the amount of dander in his coat. At the very least, try to brush him at least a few times a week with a de-shedding brush, in a different room. I find the Furminator brand brushes work really well on most cat coats.

That very much depends on the cat and the type of coat they have. Some coat types have a tendency to get very compacted and/or matted if they aren’t bathed regularly to loosen the shed hair. Some cats are unable to properly self-groom and need regular bathing. Sometimes a cat gets into something really nasty and letting them self-groom could make them very sick.

Is this a novel idea in Australia? They’re pretty common around here (PNW US). I first came across the idea about 10 years ago when a friend built a catio for their cats. I built a one for Ozzy this summer. We don’t let our cats outside unattended, but he was constantly pawing at the patio door and meowing. Any time someone went out there, he would try to squeeze through. We tried a harness and leash but he absolutely hates it and just lies on his belly until we take it off. So I built a little enclosure up against a window in our TV room. It doesn’t have a large footprint but it’s about 7 feet tall and has platforms on multiple levels. He has access through a pet door I mounted in a chunk of plywood that fits in the window. He loves it. Spends hours in there nearly every day. Our other cat stuck her head out the door once for about 5 minutes, and has shown zero interest since. 🤣

I built mine from scratch materials, but there are lots of prefab kits available these days.

Anya does this to me at bedtime. She waits for me to get in bed, then jumps up on the bed, walks up the length of my body, sits on my chest, gets right in my face and demands all the scritches. If she feels like we are staying up too late, she gets upset and starts meowing loudly to let me know it’s time for the evening scritches.

Your filing system is impeccable.

I’ve never understood why people do that. There are so many shelters that will happily take a surrendered kitten (or adult cat), no questions asked.

Thanks for taking her in. She looks like she’s very loved.

See also: ribbons

One of our cats has a really unhealthy obsession with ribbon. The sort used in gift-wrapping or for party balloons. If anyone happens to leave a piece of ribbon lying around she will absolutely find it and try to eat it. More than once this has resulted in massive vomiting and/or diarrhea.

I still flush the Naturally Fresh. It’s biodegradable and shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re on a septic system or something.

Don’t know if it’s helpful or even compatible with your device, but about 8 months ago I switched our (non-automated) litter boxes over to using a new litter, “Naturally Fresh”. It’s made out of crushed walnut shells, and they market it as having natural odor-control properties. It’s also significantly cheaper than the “World’s Best” cat litter we were using previously. For my part, I attest that the marketing is not just hype. We keep a litter box in our downstairs powder room which guests typically use. Several people who have visited with us since the change have commented on how little odor there is and wanted to know what litter we’re using (mostly other cat owners). Alternatively, you can buy odor-control litter additives at the pet store. I’ve used one made out of (I think?) wheat bran that works pretty well.

I’ve paid the local cat shelter adoption fees, but I don’t think that counts. It helps them stay in operation, and covers things like spaying/neutering.

Poopin’ pals