PawSip:
a desktop cat
that keeps me hydrated.

I kept forgetting to drink water while I worked. Reminder apps didn't fix it: I dismissed their notifications without reading them.

So I tried a different shape for the same idea. PawSip puts a small ginger cat on the desktop. It naps while I work, wakes up when it's time to drink, waves, meows and asks. When I drink, it drinks with me. A companion turned out to be much harder to ignore than a notification, and a lot nicer to see during a long day.

Behind the cat is a complete hydration tracker. You set a daily goal in glasses or milliliters, log drinks in one click, and see your day as a filling water ring. The goal resets at midnight and every day is kept, so there are weekly and monthly statistics and a hydration calendar. Everything stays on the PC: no account, no tracking. The only thing it fetches is a once-a-day update check, which you can turn off.

Expressive.
Never in the way.

The cat is drawn entirely with vector shapes, so it stays crisp at any size and display scale. Every part has its own transform, which lets it blink, look around, twitch an ear, wave, walk in from the edge of the screen, nap with floating Zzz, sip water through a straw and celebrate with hearts.

On the desktop, the cat sits above a small water gauge. Hover it to log a glass, undo a mistake or open the dashboard. Right-click for “remind me in…”, the cat's size, and whether it stays on top of other windows. Drag it anywhere and it remembers the spot. Between reminders it naps, so it's charming without being distracting.

Follows the person.
Not the clock.

Most reminder apps run on a timetable. I wanted PawSip to run on presence: if I'm actually at the computer, the cat may remind me, whatever the hour. If I'm away, it waits. Every reminder goes through four simple questions.

The interval adapts as well. PawSip compares your progress with where you'd expect to be in your day. Behind, and reminders come up to about a third sooner; ahead, they relax. Reach the goal and the cat rests until tomorrow. Remind me later lets you choose 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, or an hour.

The rules are deliberately simple, and each one can be adjusted in Settings. They encourage a habit; they aren't medical advice. How much water is right depends on the person.

Always there.
Barely noticeable.

A desktop companion runs all day, so its cost matters. The scheduler wakes once every 20 seconds for a cheap check, with no busy loops. The cat animates at a gentle frame rate, and only while it's on screen. When a window closes, PawSip hands unused memory back to Windows.

Presence comes from Windows itself. Display power notifications say whether the screen is on, session events say whether the PC is locked, and the last-input time says whether someone is there. Fullscreen detection uses the shell's own “busy” state plus a check of the window in front.

Even the meow is generated. It's synthesized in code from harmonics shaped by moving vowel resonances, “ee” to “ah” to “oo”, so there are no audio files to ship. There's also a chime, a water drop, or silence.

One codebase builds two targets: .NET 10 for Windows 10 and 11, published self-contained for x64, ARM64 and 32-bit, and .NET Framework 4.8 for Windows 7 SP1 and 8.1, which becomes a 2.6 MB installer.

A small app.
Room to grow.

Next on my list: code-signing, so SmartScreen stays quiet; proper release pages with notes for each version; testing the ARM64 and Windows 7 builds on real hardware; and a few more companions for people who aren't cat people.

PawSip started as a fix for my own bad habit. The interesting part was making something that sits on screen all day and still feels light, polite and a little bit delightful. If it helps you drink a few more glasses, the cat has done its job.