Yesterday was very hot here in L.A. I arrived home late in the afternoon to find my three cats miserable from the heat. I opened windows and turned on fans, but my place has always been hard to cool.
I opened the refrigerator to get something for dinner, and when I looked back Bear was just stepping into the lower section of the refrigerator. He looked back at me with a look that said, “How come you have never done this for me before?”
I hoicked him out before he could open a crisper drawer and settle in. I have to admit thinking about leaving the door open for a few minutes so all three of them could get a short break from the heat, and screw the electric bill. But they would expect me to do it whenever they felt in need of a slight bit of coolth, and I indulge the little furry terrorists enough as it is.
And yet some cats just looove heat. The cat we had when I was growing up would go up into the attic on the hottest summer days. It was stuffy beyond belief up there, so hot it was as if you couldn’t breathe.
My cat loves the heat. And the cold. I think she’s just impervious to weather or something. She’s longhaired, and super fat so I know she feels it. But she’s been outside non-stop for the last couple months. It’s an enclosed area; she doesn’t go anywhere. She just lays on her back roasting in the sun. And I live in the South-- it’s not playing around. It’s hot and humid as hell. But I’ll be damned if I can get her to come in.
This has been the first hot summer in the UK for six years. I was sad to discover that my fifteen year cat is now unable to tolerate the heat. She was lying at the top of the stairs, the coolest place she could find, looking very sorry for herself. being gently sponged with water helped so I instituted a regime where anyone who noticed her up there looking sad should give her a sponging.
I was doing a road trip transporting a friend and her cat, poor thing was seriously over heated. While we were on the Cape May Ferry southbound we grabbed the bag of ice out of the cooler and wrapped it in the towel and put it back into the cat carrier. Cat loved it and didn’t want us to remove the bag of ice, so we had to figure out how to deal with shuffling stuff around in the car so the carrier could go on the floor and not drip on the seats or anything that would be ruined by water drips.
Oh yes, know the feeling. I used to have an older fridge that needed regular defrosting. Cat used to help himself whenever it was cleaned and turned back on to get cold. I had to prop the door to load things back in - and I’d turn around to find him in the fridge almost every time. Once he even tried hiding in the drawer
Have a carrier? An old camera bag? Diaper Bag (which are great for thief-proof camera bags, BTW)?
Any insulated/padded device with frozen bottles on the bottom, covered with a layer or two of bath towel, placed near popular cat perch/path will quickly become a favorite hang-out,
If you want to keep it dry, line it with a trash can plastic liner
Thanks for all the cat cool-down suggestions, but I suspect that Bear would rather complain than be comfortable. He insists on perching on top of a bookshelf five and a half feet off the floor. Got to be the hottest place in the house, but that is where he wants to be and it’s my job to make it more tolerable.
Now when I open the refrigerator I look very carefully before closing it to be sure Bear is elsewhere. The other day I found a very dead house fly in the refrigerator, apparently frozen to death (No, I didn’t see if he revived when returned to room temperature) and I was reminded of the part in a Stephen King novel where he describes an abandoned refrigerator which opens from time to time to snare and kill birds. Brr!