Attention and interruption
How animals show up around laptops, calls, keyboards, and the corners of shared rooms where work tends to happen. Most of these reports are unremarkable on their own; they get useful when readers see the same shape twice.
FARI is a volunteer-run archive. We collect ordinary household observations — the cat on the warm router, the timer that goes off before the kettle, the keyboard that gets walked on during a quiet call — and we publish anonymized summaries with enough detail to be useful and not enough to identify anyone.
The project started in late 2021 as a shared spreadsheet between two readers of an old behavioral journal. It is still mostly a spreadsheet, with better edges.
How animals show up around laptops, calls, keyboards, and the corners of shared rooms where work tends to happen. Most of these reports are unremarkable on their own; they get useful when readers see the same shape twice.
How timers, speakers, cameras, and notifications quietly reshape feeding, play, rest, and the small adjustments owners make to keep the household running.
How a careful note differs from a story. We try to keep the reporting close to what was actually observed and let the comparisons happen at the desk, not in the first paragraph of a submission.
Reviewed reports with time, setting, devices present, observer notes, and a confidence label. Updated when new context arrives.
The recurring shapes the desk groups reports under before they get published. Signals are descriptions, not claims of intent.
A short practical guide for recording a useful observation without putting the animal under stress or rearranging your home around the camera.
After three submitters asked us to stop accepting raw assistant exports, the desk now reads a one-page written summary instead. Less private data on our side, fewer redactions later, no loss of useful context so far.
If you sent a winter report and the household routine has shifted with the longer daylight, we would like a brief follow-up note. Two lines is enough.