There is a secret easter egg where you can activate a virtual cat on a linux or a UNIX system. Though it is reported that it can hang your system in certain distros so it is best advised you save and close all your work and so on before attempting because if things go wrong, you may be forced to pull out the power plug.

To summon the cat, try the following command:

meow() { meow | meow & }; meow

If you see something like

[1] 583341
[1]+  Done                 meow|meow

Quickly up arrow and rerun the command untill you see no output. And after a few seconds the cat will appear on the screen that follows your mouse pointer. Very cute.

Update: This also works in Windows with GitBash

  • MorningstarCorndog
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    1 year ago

    I’ll be honest: I got caught by this trick this morning because I was not paying attention. And I am glad the joke is out here; it gives us a reminder to know what were executing when were running or programming code. Lovely work OP.

    • cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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      1 year ago

      There is actually a program for cats following your cursor called oneko which is legit, should be in your distro official repo