Finding Fonts and Designs
Figure out how to make the common keystrokes used to create a cat. There are certain keys you will need to use for different parts of the cat’s body. Some people make more complex cats than others do with their keyboards. But they tend to use the same keys. Using ^ marks (hold one of the shift keys and press 6 on the numbers above the first row of letters) make good cat ears, and you can use either a w for a cat's mouth, two underscores and a period in between them, or just a period for a nose. You can use lowercase or uppercase letter o's for eyes; if you want a surprised cat, q's can be 'crying' eyes, or you can use @ signs for dizzy eyes, if you like. Don't hesitate to experiment in a text document.
Use the right font, and try not to use spacing. Unless specified, many emoticons don't use spacing between the characters. Add spaces, or use the wrong font, and it might not resemble a cat at all. When using multiple lines of text to create a cat with feet, the figure may not appear correctly when using a font that is not monospaced, meaning a font whose letters do not have a uniform horizontal width. Examples of common mono-spaced fonts include Courier and American Typewriter. Many common fonts, including Times New Roman and Arial, are not monospaced. These are known as proportional fonts.
Research ASCII art cat faces online. In its most complex forms, such artwork (of cats and other things) has a technical name. It’s called ASCII art. That’s a graphic design technique that creates designs using the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII standard. There are lots of different kinds of cats, and the designs get extraordinarily complex. For example, you have the everyday ^^ face, which is made by pressing shift and 6 twice, the =' . '= face, which kind of speaks for itself, and lots of other different faces. Just play around and use your imagination. ASCII is considered an artform because there is no single way to make a cat or anything on it really. There are many free resources available with pre-made ASCII art online. Try doing an online search for the image you're trying to make followed by the word ASCII to see what others have already made. If you're interested in making your own ASCII art, try searching for a tutorial on making ASCII art. It's amazing what you can do with your keyboard. You can also enable different languages on your keyboard, so you will be able to use signs from different alphabets, or you can just go online and search ASCII art for examples of cat faces.
Creating Complex Cats
Add some variations to your cat. You can vary the symbol by replacing the two periods with a hyphen or an underscore: =^-^= or =^_^=. There is room for creativity, so feel free to introduce new variations. You could also type the following: = ' . ' = Note: if you leave out the spaces, you will get this ='.'=. Adding feet creates a new line; begin creating the cat's feet on the line of text below the one on which the cat face is located by pressing the enter key. Create the first foot: Type an open parenthesis followed by a quotation mark and a closed parenthesis. After this step, you will have: (") Create the second foot: Repeat Step 2. After this step, you will have: (")(") Enjoy your cat face. The cat face and feet together will look like this: =^..^= (")(")
Attempt other versions of the cat. You can try other variations of the cat, such as (^ ' w ' ^) (Left parenthesis, caret, space, single quote, space, w, space, single quote, space, caret, right parenthesis). There are many variations of cat faces, some focusing on the cat eyes. Another version is (^ = ' w ' = ^) (added equal signs for whiskers.) You'll quickly notice that the carets (^) are important parts here because these resembles the cat ears.
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