Animated cat appears when MS Word is launched

A friend asked me to help her with uploading a resume created in Word 2003 to a prospective employer's website. When she opens Word, an animated cat appears and hovers over Word, usually hovering in the upper left corner of the Word window, where it covers most of the Save button and makes it difficult to click on the Save button without clicking on the cat.

If the cat is inadvertently clicked, it opens a panel saying you have subscribed to some service. I did not see this, since she did not want to duplicate the event in order to demonstrate it to me; she just tried to explain what happens. She says her daughter "installed" it. Sorry, I can't give a better explanation since her explanation to me was kind of fuzzy.

I suspect this is malware or spyware. Has anyone seen or heard of this?

I do not know what spyware removal tools she has installed, if any.

 

This may sound like Office 97 Assistant: Earl the Cat but she's using Office 2003. I had Office 97 years ago and I recall the Office 97 Assistant, which looked like the head of a cat popping up at certain times. But, this case is different. The image is a whole cat, tag wagging, and, as far as I know, it always hovers in the upper left corner of the Word window, as explained in my first post.