Maukie

Designed for the Yahoo! Widget Engine, Maukies is a lightweight and fun app which displays the animation of a cat directly on your desktop. It can be easily installed and configured, even by users with no experience in software programs.

The interface of the tool is based on a small frame which you can move to any position on the screen with the help of the mouse cursor. The cat is black and white, has green eyes and a red collar.

However, the animation does not run smoothly; it seems that Maukies has not been updated for a very long time. By opening the context menu, you can access the Widget Preferences area, in order to configure some settings.

You can select the arrangement method between Top, Normal and Bottom. Thanks to the default options provided by the Yahoo! Widget Engine, you can make the frame stay on top or below all the other windows, ignore mouse events and prevent dragging. You can adjust its opacity level between 20% and 100%.

The simple-to-use animation is not a concern to the computer's resources, as it runs on a very low quantity of CPU and system memory. It is very responsive to keyboard commands and mouse events. No error dialogs have been shown in our tests and Maukies did not hang or crash. This app comes packed with limited features, but it can be a fun tool, especially for the younger audience.