Cat Pet Status Bar
just blobcat in your status bar 🐱
Installation
- Install BlobCat from the VS Code Marketplace (or run
ext install blobcat.cat-pet-statusbar from the Command Palette).
- Fully restart VS Code — quit every window and reopen it. The cat then appears on the left side of the status bar.
A window reload is not enough. The cat is injected into VS Code's workbench.html, which is only read at startup.
The cat didn't show up?
The extension patches workbench.html automatically on startup, but that can fail silently — most often when VS Code is installed in a protected location (e.g. C:\Program Files\). To run the patch manually and see any error:
- Open the Command Palette —
Ctrl+Shift+P (Cmd+Shift+P on macOS).
- Run
Cat Pet: Install Status Bar Pet.
- It reports success, or shows the reason it failed.
- Restart VS Code.
If it reports a permission error, start VS Code once as administrator, run the command again, then restart normally.
⚠️ After Installation
To render the cat in the status bar, this extension injects a <script> tag into VS Code's workbench.html.
As a result, VS Code may show this notification once on startup:
Your Code installation appears to be corrupt. Please reinstall.
This is expected — please ignore it. VS Code's integrity check detects that the workbench HTML has been modified and warns about it, but nothing is actually broken. You can safely click "Don't show again."
Usage
- Typing makes the cat jump with little pink particles.
- Clicking the cat pets it — it does a happy wiggle and spawns floating hearts.
- After 30 seconds of inactivity, the cat dozes off (eyes closed, slower tail).
- Hovering tilts the cat and brightens its cheeks.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
blobcat.enableSleep |
true |
Close the cat's eyes after 30 seconds of inactivity. |
blobcat.enableParticles |
true |
Spawn pink particles when the cat jumps on keystroke. |
blobcat.enablePetting |
true |
Click the cat to pet it — wiggle + heart particles. |
blobcat.catScale |
1 |
Size multiplier for the cat (0.5 – 3). |
blobcat.catOpacity |
1 |
Opacity of the cat (0.1 – 1). |
blobcat.catColor |
#FFFFFF |
Body/tail color (any CSS color string, e.g. orange, #FFB6A3). |
Changing a setting rewrites VS Code's workbench.html; restart VS Code for the new values to take effect.
How to Remove
Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) → run Cat Pet: Remove Status Bar Pet → restart VS Code.
For manual removal, delete the block between <!-- CAT_PET_INJECT_START --> and <!-- CAT_PET_INJECT_END --> in <VS Code install path>/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html.
