My cat... always in the way. He's the 5th one we've had in 30 years of marriage, and the most curious/underfoot. Had no idea he was visiting the inside of my tablesaw until I found sawdust on his head one day and started to wonder about it...
I’m with you on the shop cat.
We have had a half dozen, including rescues and feral strays I have (mostly) tamed.
My last (or perhaps, hopefully, most recent) shop cat was a foudling Maine coon rescue. An abandoned runt Coon, blind in one eye and the smartest cat I have known. Seeing her outside enjoying the snow, double coat insulated, not giving a fiddler’s dang about the ice on her mane was part of the allure.
She was trained to a dozen voice commands and unbothered by any-freaking-thing. Covered by sawdust in the shop? Meh, whatever, keep cutting, I’ll just stay here. Oh, you want to vacuum the carpet in the house? Hey, I’m laying here, just vacuum around me dammit.
She loved people, the more the merrier. 20 people in the living room? She would just plonk herself down in the middle of the circle. Oh, someone brought a dog? I’ll beat the jejusus out of it for funsies, just so it knows whose house this is.
Or, more fun, I’ll chase the poor dog outside and wait patiently by the cat door ‘til it pokes its head in. Whapwhapwhap across the nose you dumb canine. She would creep out the cat doors to suddenly maul friends’s dogs I had let back in the shop. Her house, her shop, her people. Don’t you forget it.
The next shop rescue cat will be another Maine Coon. It will probably be dumb as a box of rocks in comparison, but I can’t resist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Coon
