This Chair Lets Your Pet Sit Next To You While You WFH

One year in to working from home, dogs and cats alike have realized that (some) humans just aren’t leaving the house from nine to five like they used to, for better or worse. Whether your cat or dog has become a valued member of your Zoom meetings or a straight up keyboard hog, you might be interested in this companion chair project by Simone Giertz.

Designer, maker, and robot builder Simone Giertz was inspired by her own WFH companion, the 1-year-old three-legged pup, Scraps. “I love my dog, but she is so needy,” Giertz said in a video on her YouTube channel. “Like, she always just wants to sit on me, and if there’s any part of my body that’s horizontal, she will try to lay on it.” Sound familiar?

Giertz started looking online for an office chair for her standing desk that was pet-compatible (think: little stairs for climbing up then down — then up, then down… again) but reached the end of her Google search with no great results.

So she took Scraps’ measurements — approximately 15 x 36 x 50 cm, by the way — and started working on prototypes for a barstool-height chair with stairs and two resting spots for Scraps.

After several revisions — making the steps less steep and adding a railing were a must — she arrived at a curved, multi-level seafoam chair with a red cushion for her to sit on and Scraps to rest on.

There are stairs (complete with drawers for storing dog toys) for easy climbing up and down and a footstool where Giertz can rest her feet while Scraps lies in the nook behind her.

Giertz said in her video that she might consider turning the companion chair into a product after more refining. In the meantime, you can watch her majorly upgrade her bed, create a task lamp that looks like scissors, and build other robots on her YouTube channel.