Mochi
A little cat that lives on your Windows desktop — and actually understands it.
Mochi walks along your taskbar, hops up your desktop icons, naps on your widgets and sneaks inside your apps. She reacts to your music, reminds you to take a break, and remembers how you treat her. One small download, no account, no setup.
What it is
Mochi, in detail.
A little cat that lives on your Windows desktop — and actually understands it.
Desktop pets usually pace back and forth along the bottom of the screen. Mochi reads the desktop she lives on: every window and widget, every desktop icon, the taskbar — including one that auto-hides, which lifts her up when it slides out and lowers her when it slides away.
She moves like a cat rather than a sprite. Gravity, momentum and real jump arcs: she crouches and wiggles before she jumps, stretches out in the air, lands with a small squash and skids if you throw her. Icons are solid, so she arcs over their corners and climbs the side of a stacked column. Double-click an empty spot on the desktop and she plans a route there — small hops up the icons, a leap at a widget's side, a climb to the top.
She also goes inside your apps. Windows UI Automation tells her where the toolbars, lists and chat boxes are in whatever is open, so those become ledges she can sit on, and she rides along when you drag the window. Underneath it all she has moods that persist between sessions — energy, hunger and affection — so a cat you pet and feed behaves differently from one you ignore.
What it does
She understands the desktop
Windows, widgets, desktop icons and the taskbar are all surfaces to her, read live as they move. Drag a window she is sitting on and she rides along; close it and she drops to whatever is below.
Real physics, cat manners
Gravity, momentum and jump arcs limited by how fast a cat can actually take off. She crouches before a jump, lands with a squash, bounces off the screen edges when thrown and never walks off the side of your monitor.
Double-click and she comes
Double-click empty desktop and she works out a route there — hop by hop up the icons, a leap and a climb up a widget's side — then sits and looks at the spot you picked.
Inside your apps
Toolbars, lists and chat boxes in the window you are using become ledges. She drops in from the title bar, keeps her place while the app scrolls and streams, and sneaks back out on her own.
A soundtrack reaction
Mochi reads Windows' Now Playing list, so Spotify, Apple Music (lossless included) and YouTube in a browser all count. Pick a music mood: Happy and she dances every few seconds, Sad and she cries.
Breaks, focus and notifications
Eye, stretch and water reminders that only count time you are actually at the PC, an optional prayer-time reminder, a 25-minute focus timer she naps through, and a local event API that lets your own tools hand her a message to deliver.
Moods she remembers
Energy, hunger and affection carry over between sessions. A hungry cat begs for a treat, a tired one naps, an ignored one sits with her back to you — and the perch where you pet her most becomes her favourite.
Play, Stay and three cats
Wiggle the cursor and she stalks it, or switch on the laser pointer. Stay keeps her on the desktop layer, behind your apps. Scottish Fold, Ginger or Persian, in three sizes, from the tray.
Built with
- Python 3
- PySide6 (Qt) — drawing, window and tray
- Win32 via ctypes
- Windows UI Automation (comtypes)
- Windows Now Playing (WinRT)
- Climbs icons, widgets and windows
- Goes inside your apps
- Dances — or cries — to your music
- Moods she remembers
Worth knowing
- Windows 10 and 11 only: she is built on Windows' own window, icon, automation and media APIs.
- The download is a single unsigned executable, so Windows SmartScreen may warn on first launch — More info, then Run anyway. The first start takes a few seconds while it unpacks.
- Nothing leaves your PC unless you switch it on: there is no account and no telemetry. The two features that use the network — prayer times and the optional Telegram file drop — are off until you configure them.
- To find desktop icon positions she reads them from Explorer's icon list, a standard technique that some security tools flag.
- MIT licensed. The source, the tests and the scripts that build the executable are all in the repository.
Where it goes next
- A code-signed build, so SmartScreen stops asking.
- More cats, and more ways to play with them.
- A settings window, so config.json becomes optional.
Let her move in
Mochi is free, and she fits in one download.
Download Mochi.exe and double-click it. She drops in from the top of your screen, finds the taskbar and starts exploring — and the cat in the tray holds the rest: breed, size, music mood, reminders and Stay.