Neko 🐈

A calm desktop cat for macOS. It lives on the bottom edge of your screen, sleeps on a daily rhythm, occasionally gets the zoomies, wanders around, eats kibble you sprinkle, and sometimes willfully digs through the wall and disappears for a while. Native, zero dependencies.

Features

• Needs-driven daily routine: energy / boredom / hunger drives + time-of-day rhythm (sleeps deeper at night, peaks of activity at dawn and dusk — cats are crepuscular).
• Feeding — hold ⌃⌥⌘X (works in any keyboard layout): kibble pours from the cursor with a pause; move the cursor to scatter a trail or a heap.
  • Kibble has real physics: gravity, mass, friction, bounce. You can drag and throw pieces; thrown from the upper half of the screen they fly off the edge and vanish.
  • Heaps collapse: pull out a bottom piece and the ones above tumble down (a piece only rests when wedged between two).
  • The cat eats the top pieces bite by bite (3–4 bites), sitting behind the heap. It is not woken up to eat — it will come once it wakes on its own.
• Drag the cat with the mouse (it dangles its legs and lands softly on its feet).
• Walkabout: every now and then it walks to the edge, digs, and leaves for 3–10 minutes, then comes back.
• Auto-update via GitHub Releases (toggle in the menu).
• Menu-bar icon is the cat's face (cut from the sprite).

Install

Download Neko.zip from the latest release, unzip it, and move Neko.app to Applications. On first launch (the app isn't notarized): right-click Neko.app → Open. After that it updates itself.

Build & run

./build.sh            # build dist/Neko.app
open dist/Neko.app    # run

Release a new version

scripts/release.sh 1.0.1 "What's new"

Bumps the version → builds → zips → pushes → creates a GitHub Release. Installed copies update automatically (checked at launch and every 6 hours).

Controls

• ⌃⌥⌘X (hold) — pour kibble at the cursor.
• Menu-bar 🐈 → Pour kibble, Go for a walk, Check for updates, Auto-update, Quit.
• Drag with the mouse — both the cat and the kibble.

Layout

neko/
├── README.md
├── build.sh                   # build → dist/Neko.app
├── src/neko.swift             # all the code
├── scripts/release.sh         # bump + build + zip + GitHub Release
├── scripts/render-held.swift  # helper sketcher (draft)
├── assets/oneko.png           # sprite sheet
└── dist/Neko.app              # build output (gitignored)

Credits

The cat sprite is the classic oneko / Neko — a desktop pet that dates back to the 1989 Macintosh "Neko" desk accessory (Watanabe Daisuke) and the later X11 oneko. The sprite sheet (oneko.gif) used here comes from adryd325/oneko.js. All credit for the artwork goes to its original authors — this project only adds the behaviour, physics, and macOS wrapper.