You may, or may not, have ever been typing on Skype and seen your typing indicator (the writing pencil) turn into a grey kitty who sticks his paw out. If you have ever noticed this, you might be totally confused about what it is and even more confusing is trying to replicate it.

Here is the story of what that cat is and how it came into being.

That cat is what we called internally the “cat walking on keyboard” indicator. He is modelled after my cat Roley , who sadly died a few years ago. The Skype client displays him when it reads some “paw-like activity” walking across your keyboard. Those of you with cats can probably picture your cat strutting its stuff across your keyboard as you read this.

Yes. It is quite possibly the coolest non-feature ever. Thought up by a team of amazing people like Mr. Zilmer (who reproduced Roley in an animated emoticon) and Mr. Mandre who did the lib work on it. And my small role in it was instigating the team to break schedules and donate their time to fun rogue projects. Ahh, the good old days…

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