If you share your life with one or more cats and throw an empty box on the floor, what have you just done? Have you just made a mess to clean up later? No, you’ve just given your cats a place to hide, a place to curl up and relax, a place to sleep.
Tigger in box, photo by Lisa Binion
Boxes come in all shapes and sizes, and cats love every one of them. It doesn’t matter whether they will fit inside the box or not, they must try to climb in and lay down in it. No pillows or soft objects are required. To them, an empty box is a place to hide and the most comfortable bed available. Boxes also eliminate the need to buy cat beds.
Katie in box, photo by Lisa Binion
Even though cats make amazing leaps through the air to land on the edge of a deck or whatever they are aiming for with perfect precision, they do like to feel safe and secure. A box, especially one that is a snug fit, gives this feeling of security.
And boxes make great hiding places. What if the box is too small? Katie, one of my female cats, demonstrated for me exactly what is done if the box is too small for her to fit in. She laid on top of the box. That was the perfect time for a picture, but it obviously embarrassed her that the box was too little. Just as I was ready to snap the ultimate picture of her squishing herself into the box, she moved. Talking a cat into staying posed is next to impossible.
Cats are natural predators. Maybe the cat wants to use the box to hide so he can pounce on anyone who passes. This can become annoying, but it isn’t deadly.
Domestic cats aren’t the only felines who love boxes. Tigers, lions, panthers, and other large cats love boxes too. While being pounced on by your housecat might not be so bad, imagine a tiger jumping out of a refrigerator box and attacking you. That would not be so much fun, and it could be deadly.
Or it could be the cat is stressed and just wants to get away from all other animals and humans. Maybe they think that even if they don’t fit completely inside the box, it will make them invisible to whoever else happens to be close.
cats, pixabay
Writing Prompts
But are these the only reasons they love boxes so?
Have you ever wondered what your cat is thinking about when crawling into a box?
What if cats are from some distant planet and their spaceships are made just like boxes? Do they think that boxes will take them wherever they want to go?
D0 mommy cats tell their kittens stories of the days before they left their planet? They were being attacked by the inhabitants from the planet of dogs. Even though dogs and cats on Earth are often friends, that wasn’t possible on the planet that was their true home.
Do cats still have hopes of finding a spaceship to take them back to their home planet? Where did they hide the spaceship when they arrived on Earth? Has it been so long that its location is no longer known by anyone? Or have they lost the desire to return to their home planet because they now think of Earth as home?
cat reading, pixabay
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