Cat Shenanigans.

The cat, kind soul that she is, wanted to let me know she thinks my keyboard could use a bit of a cleaning. As she is perfectly and clearly understandable when she meows and purrs, but her human personnel are a bit slow on the uptake, she had to use drastic measures to demonstrate the cleaning necessity.

Which was achieved by hooking a claw underneath the Alt-Gr key and pulling. This, of course, was at first misinterpreted by her desk-sitting, cat-petting human as a mere coincidence, as she likes to knead when she's hanging out on the desk. The human was soon aware, though, that there was an astounding amount of dust and cat hair under that key... so obviously, there must have been a reason for the cat to do this. Right?

[caption id="attachment_3236" align="alignnone" width="902"] The culprit, erm, the graciously observant cat right after the deed, acting like nothing has happened.


So I did take the hint, and subsequently the small vacuum cleaner with a little brush (after Madame had left the desk, of course, as she is not fond of vacuum cleaner noises), and removed more astounding amounts of cat hair and dust from underneath the other keys.

Then came the fun task of figuring out how the three bits of plastic are supposed to fit together... and after two or so false starts, I managed to get them into correct order and position again.

[caption id="attachment_3238" align="alignnone" width="436"] One of the plastic bits. And cat hair.


Placing the two white parts together again required bending the smaller one to get the little axles into their sockets again; for the rest, it was the combination of sliding something into one holder, then pressing the other end down until it clicked into place - once to fasten the white bits to the key plate, once to secure the whole setup to the keyboard again.

[caption id="attachment_3237" align="alignnone" width="768"] The two white bits, reunited, waiting to be set back into place underneath the key plate.


Actually, that was fun, if a bit scary when doing the bending-to-set-into-place-bit (especially as I had to do it twice, not getting the stacking order correctly at the first go. Not something I'd have chosen to do this morning without the cat prompt, but I do find it interesting to see how things like that work - and putting torn-apart bits together is an excellent way to figure that out.

Now, though, I hope the cat will abstain from pulling out more keys - I do have actual work to do...