Tire her out before the call, not during it
The most reliable meeting companion is a cat who has already had her hunt for the day. Ten minutes of energetic wand-toy play before a block of calls, ending with a small meal or a puzzle feeder to complete the hunt-and-eat pattern, sends most cats into a long, contented sleep that comfortably covers a morning of meetings. Trying to start entertaining her once she is already parading across your desk means you are negotiating from weakness, one-handed, on camera.
If you have one predictable big call each day, anchor the play session to it like a fixture. Cats are creatures of schedule, and a cat who knows the game happens before you sit down at the desk stops campaigning for it during the call itself.
Give her a station of her own in the room
Cats join video calls largely because your desk is warm, high, central, and has you at it. Offer a better version of the same deal a short distance away: a bed or box on a side table or wide shelf at desk height, ideally in a patch of sun or with a view out of a window, and reward her for using it until it is her default meeting seat. A window perch with a view of birds or street life outperforms most toys for sustained, quiet occupation.
Place a puzzle feeder or a lick mat with a smear of her food on it at that station when an important call starts. Working food out of a puzzle is silent, stationary, and absorbing in a way that a jingling toy rolled under your chair is not, and it keeps her body and attention pointed away from your keyboard.
A rotation of silent solo toys
Keep a small box of call-compatible toys separate from her general toys and rotate them so each call day offers something she has not batted around in a while: a catnip kicker, a crinkle ball, a cardboard scratcher, a treat-dispensing ball set to a slow release. Novelty is the active ingredient; the same toy left out permanently becomes furniture within a week.
Avoid anything with bells or electronic chirping if your microphone picks up the room, and avoid string toys unsupervised, since a cat swallowing thread is an emergency, not a meeting interruption. Whatever she chews during calls should be safe to leave her alone with when your eyes are on a screen.
The graceful mid-call redirect
When she does arrive, and she will, a silent, practised redirect beats repeated pushing away, which most cats read as a game worth escalating. Keep one high-value toy on your desk solely for this moment, toss it toward her station, and return your eyes to the screen. If she settles on the desk in a spot that is not the keyboard, consider letting that be the win; many a cat simply wants to be near you and, once permitted a corner of the desk, sleeps there through the rest of the call. Close the door for genuinely critical calls without guilt, provided she has water, a tray within reach on the other side, and her entertainment set up wherever she is spending that hour.
Fresh ideas when the routine goes stale
Every enrichment routine dulls eventually, and the week she loses interest in the puzzle feeder is usually the week of your busiest calls. Put a follow-up question to KinsLe's Kinny; he answers using the KinsLe Answers library, so you always have a next trick ready before meeting time rather than improvising during it.