Blog Post

The Many Pets of PSPDFKit

Remote work can sometimes get lonely, so in this blog post, we decided to give a shoutout to all the helpers (big and small) that keep us company and make our lives better: our pets! I sent out a CFP (Call for Pets) and everyone got together to show their friends to the world. I was surprised both by the amount of pets and, as you’ll see, by how diverse a cast of pets we have in the company.

So without further ado, in everyone’s own words, here they are!

Amira, Nimbus, Pixel, Bestest Ratty Friends, Simba, Cujo, and Twinkles (Patrik, Developer from the US)

Patrik didn’t write a small summary about his pets, but we can summarize it in this exchange:

Slack conversation

Also, the names of his rats are Cupcake, Bebop, Luna, Dumpling, Pickles, Waffles, and Cinder, but we chose to refer to them by their collective name.

Apollo and Athena (Gabriel, Developer from Brazil)

I adopted Apollo and Athena (also known as “white cat” and “gray cat”) almost a year ago. They’re brothers, and Athena was supposed to be a she, but during their first time at the vet, we discovered I was bamboozled. The name stuck. They do pretty much everything together, including destroying what’s left of my apartment’s furniture. In the mornings, they’re usually part of my meeting setup and can be seen as part of the background — or even the foreground.

Bella, Stella, and Sophie (Richard, Director of Sales from the US)

Here’s our crew at home. Bella 11 (brown), Stella 9 (black) and Sophie 6 (yellow). Bella and Stella (no relation) belonged to me and my wife, respectively, before we met. Now they’ve been together as long as we have.

Sophie and Stella are actually half sisters. My aunt breeds labs, and unfortunately, someone had abused Sophie when she was a puppy, so we rescued her and added her to the pack.

Disclaimer: Being outnumbered by dogs is something you should be wary about. 🙂 They go where we go though.

Buggu (Akshat, Developer from India)

Meet Buggu! She’s a Golden Retriever adopted by my close friends; they also live quite close to us, so we’re her godparents. 😄

Debra and Elettra (Simone, Developer from Italy)

Debra is my faithful stubborn dog who sleeps in strange positions. She loves me and is always close to me; wherever I go, she goes, and she never abandons me. 😀

Elettra is my beautiful favorite scarf. She likes to escape from her terrarium, and when on my shoulders, she likes to stare at the world.

Eve (Amit, Developer from the UK)

This is Eve, the neighbor’s cat, who decided to explore our garden two years ago, and has since then gradually become more comfortable with us. Eventually she trusted us enough to visit my office. She’s especially fond of messing with the paper in the paper tray and looking at the birds from the window. I’m grateful for her company over the lockdowns. (The neighbors are OK with this, by the way.)

Maurice and Lili (Rad, Developer from Canada)

Here are a couple of photos of Maurice and a photo of Lili (my mom’s cat).

Plumita (Guillermo, Developer from Paraguay)

My cat is called Plumita, which means “little feather” in Spanish. I adopted her in May of this year when she was two months old. Her favorite activities are dropping stuff and acting surprised about it (as can be seen in the first picture), helping me while I study, and sleeping on the couch that she likes to scratch the most. She likes constant attention and purring a lot! She also loves to crash my Zoom meetings.

Rhodes (Steve, QA Engineer from the US)

My cat is named Rhodes. He convinced me in September of 2014 that I should adopt him….still working on how he pulled that one off. To describe him, all I have to tell you is his secret name: Crazy Cat. He’s all about playing, and you’ll never see him walking with his tail down. When Crazy Cat comes to visit, his tail usually turns into a shepherd’s hook and he raises up on his back legs.

Spaghetti and Rigatone (Will, Developer from Italy)

Yes, my cats are named after pasta. After a long discussion with my wife about naming them after satellites (Sputnik is such a dope cat name), we settled for something that we both like and that she’ll actually remember. 🤌 They were adopted in Brazil and came to Italy with us. I still remember when we were in customs and everyone was trying to pet them. I also remember how hard it was to get a stressed cat to be quiet to pass through the metal detector. Fun times!

Spaghetti is the chaotic one and Rigatone is the chill one. They complement each other quite nicely!

Temida (Arek, Developer from Poland)

My cat Temida (although we call her Kitka, which is just a cute name for a female cat in Polish) has been with us for a little over a year. She’s blind and she doesn’t have any teeth, but that doesn’t stop her from grazing, biting our toes when she’s hungry, or devouring carton boxes. Her favorite activity is sunbathing on a balcony. She’s great for remote work, because she forces me to take breaks to feed her or give her medicine.

Tetris and Pica (Natalye, Editor from Germany)

I have two cats: Tetris Nightcrawler Caruso (orange) and Picasaurus Huggybear Nook (black). I got them both in January 2006 when they were kittens, and they’ve grown old with me — even making the trip across the Atlantic when I moved to Germany 10 years ago. They’re both 16. Since they’re now lazy old men, they spend their days sleeping, eating, complaining that there’s not enough to eat, sunbathing, finding obscure spots to sleep/hide, awkwardly positioning themselves in the most inconvenient and uncomfortable places possible in an effort to be as physically close to the household’s humans as is allowed, and shedding fur everywhere. When I’m working, they like to curl up together on the armchair in my office and snooze, or gaze out the window and chatter at the birds that land on the balcony. I even have a tattoo of them (along with their other two cat siblings, who passed away).

Titan (Petra, Designer from Slovenia)

This is Titan. His full name is Titan Cesars Forest, 🌳 which perfectly explains his character. He recently celebrated his 13th birthday but decided not to share his peanut butter pumpkin cake with anyone. His favorite food is everything, but he gets the biggest saliva waterfalls after smelling mandarines. 💦

He participates in a lot of our Zoom meetings but he’s caught napping through most of them. 💤

I think he deserves some bonus points for currently fighting lymphoma! 💪 And it really means the world to me that I’m able to be at home with him and take care of him.

(It’s impossible for me to select photos. 99% of my photo library is dog photos 😅). I’m also attaching a puppy photo. 😍