Maybe a couple of coats of slightly thinned clear nail polish?

My guess is it’s a newer thing for the cloud, where it is common to shift load and replicate servers and software.

That’s the hay loft. Probably more so on older barns, but that’s where the term is from.

If you are gonna let your cat mess with it, I would go with a food safe style finish you would use on cutting boards or the like. Might have to reapply occasionally, but better than running the risk of the cat chipping off and ingesting a more permanent type of finish.

You probably don’t need to add holes to the shelves. There are pegs that go into the adjustable holes that are flattened on one side, and the shelf just rests on them. Should be able to get a set of universal ones from the hardware store for pretty cheap if the originals are missing.

You could always write yourself a simple bash clean-up script that kicks off the uninstall and also deleted the profile and anything else you want gone. Not a universal solution, but if you need to do that one thing often enough it would do the trick.

If the oil and soy doesn’t work, try cheap beer. Will get earwigs and slugs for sure, but might work on other parts as well. They also work better if you sink them into the ground so their lip is almost level with the soil or cover. Makes it more likely that they will find it and fall in.