Cat Mode: let the cat pounce, keep the video playing

Problem

Put a bird or fish video on for a cat and the fun lasts about ten seconds: the first paw on the keyboard pauses playback, skips the video, or opens something random. The cat wins, the video stops, and you get up to fix it again. Cat Mode is the small fix: let the cat pounce at the screen without their paws controlling the browser.

Decisions

One click, everything frozen. The whole product is one toggle. Hit it and Cat Mode freezes keyboard, mouse, trackpad, scroll, and touch, so the video keeps playing through every pounce, headbutt, and full-body slide across the desk. No settings to wade through mid-cat.

A human-only way out. Blocking all input raises an obvious question: how do you turn it back off. The unlock is a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+K by default, customizable), chosen because it is the kind of deliberate key combination a cat cannot realistically hit but a human presses in a second.

Local, private, no accounts. There is nothing to sign into and nothing tracked. Everything runs locally in the browser. A toy this small should not want your data, so it does not.

Match the tone to the use case. The whole thing is deliberately silly: pounce-proof, cat emoji, playful copy, because pretending a cat-video locker is serious software would be the wrong call. The restraint is doing one job well and not dressing it up.

Outcome

Cat Mode is live in the Chrome Web Store with a landing page that explains it in about one screen. It does exactly one thing, block input so a cat can enjoy a video without breaking it, and does that one thing cleanly. Small, finished, and shipped through Chrome Web Store review like anything else.