My cat keeps dragging things from our bedrooms into the living room. Its generally very personal items, so I’ve been discouraged from leaving dirty clothes on the bedroom floor.
He drags my son’s favorite stuffed animal upstairs, and then he raids the boy’s laundry basket to find old underwear or socks to take with him.
He steals bras from my bedroom. Or my slippers. Sometimes, when my son is visiting with his dad, he drags toys from my son’s bedroom to sleep with in my bedroom. Sometimes, shin guards are the preferred sleeping partner. Other times, its a little pillow from the boy’s bed.
Does anyone have a clue why my cat could be doing this? Does anyone else’s cat do this?
Your love cat just can’t get enough human hugs, therefore steals that which smells most humanish. Not you’re neglecting the fuzzball, but the cat probably loves human pheromone and there just can not possibly get enough attention.
LittleCat is a whore for attention and is so affectionate it’s downright annoying. There is no such thing as “enough hugs and pets” no matter how much attention she gets. She’ll swipe socks and undies out of the laundry basket, bras are just grand as far as she’s concerned. She was over the moon on a hot summer night when she found Sniffs_Markers sweaty t-shirt.
Snuggling up to that is almost as good as snuggling up to human litter-mate.
My cat did something similiar to this when he was a kitten, except it was always one specific item. My brother had back surgery, and was laid up in this bedroom in the attic. My mom kept our potholders on hooks on the refrigerator. When Furball was a kitten, he brought all the potholders up to my brother in his bedroom. We’d put them away, and he’d bring them all back again. It was quite funny, and a habit he grew out of after my brother recovered.
My oldest kitty has an obsession with my blush brush. It’s one of those big, fluffy ones, and she drags it into the living room and cries over it like it’s a dead kitten. I swear, it’s just too freaky. It’s like the child she never had. Gives me chills.
My littlest kitten likes to toss stuff off the table onto the floor to get attention. She’s nothing but trouble.
It’s normal. My cats drag around everything from slippers to pajama tops. I have a collection of rubber duckies on my tub and for the past several weeks, every time I come home there are rubber duckies all over the house. They often go upstairs, get one, and bring it back down and drop it in front of me.
My cats don’t go outside at all and I think maybe they are “capturing” prey and offering it to me as a gift. They’d do it with little birdies or moles but alas, the Tall One keeps them inside their little glass-walled house, unable to escape to practice their stalking in the great outdoors, so they make do with inanimate objects.
My dog does the same thing. She will steal items from the bedroom like socks or any item of clothing, really, and carry them to the living room floor. She rarely damages anything, just carries them to the living room and amasses a pile. If I am missing something it’s the first place I look.
She knows she is not supposed to do this, so she has gotten sneaky about it. She waits until we are not looking, then hurriedly takes the item down the hall and around a back way to the living room so I can’t see her do it unless I am looking for her. If she gets going she can get a good pile of stuff in there!
The worst is when she gets into a basket of newly folded laundry. I can close the door to our room but if it doesn’t latch she can push it open and get in there. Once she almost got a whole basket of laundry carried out to the living room, one item at a time, until I caught her. She must think it’s a game, if she sees me looking at her she will immediately drop the item, or if I call her name she will drop it as well.
It’s annoying but I usually am just amused by her. If she was damaging things I would be more upset, but it seems like she just wants to be surrounded by our stuff. Some animals just find comfort in this, I guess. I know some animals have hoarding tendencies as well, so this could also be part of it - the instinct to collect and hide things?
My cat does that with the feather duster, and he’s a neutered male cat. I have to hide it when I’m not using it. When I get it out and dust, he follows me around and makes the most pitiful crying sound and looks at me as if to say, “What are you doing with my BABY?!?”.
If I give it to him, he runs off and hides under my daughter’s bed with it. He’ll snuggle with it and lick it.
Just freaking bizarre.
I recently bought a Swiffer duster and he’s not at all interested in that.
We had one that loved the feather duster, too! She would carry it around and make a very satisfied sound, as if to say, “Look what I caught!” It was easier to take a mouse away from her than it was that duster.
We have one now that likes my wife’s socks. Clean ones only, please, and folded. She learned to open Missus Coder’s sock drawer, and will take out 4-5, drop them on the floor, and then take them downstairs one by one. It’s very annoying at 3 AM!
My rat does something like this. He steals kleenex, drags them into his cage (he gets to wander the room a bit), wraps himself up in them, and goes to sleep. But he never uses the same kleenex for more than one nap.
back in the days when unicorns were hot collectibles (hey, the fashions caught up with me, for a change), i had several different versions of stuffed fabric ones instead of throw pillows on my bed. my young Siamese cat found one particular model to be irresistible. even though it was as big as she was, she would pick it up and drag it down the steps, into the family room. she may have also indulged in some roughhousing with it, since it eventually developed a tear in one of the seams.
when i put it out of reach, she started up again with a duplicate that i had. at the time, i just chalked it up to there being something in the stuffing material that must have been attracting her. she never bothered any of the other versions that were around, or anything else that i can recall.
that is one funny memory… looking up from the family room towards the stairs, seeing this small furry body lugging another fuzzy shape of equal size determinedly down the steps.
Sorry for going slightly off topic here, but I’m wondering if the weird thing my cat does may be explained in a similar way.
He washes my hair, as if he was cleaning himself. He only does it when he’s in a particular mood, or when my hair hasn’t been washed. It started a few years ago when I came home from work and put my head in his lap. He started washing it then. Now he uses it to wake me up in the morning, knowing that it bother’s me, and gets me moving.
I can understand him using it as a tool to wake me up, but I’m curious why he would start doing it in the first place. Some kind of maternal instinct, even though he is a he?!
It must be the natural fibers, i.e., feathers and whatever-they-make-natural-blush-brushes-out-of. I swear, it sounds like she’s going to say something in English fercrissakes.
My bad, bad kitty is called Jesper.
Just as soon as an article of clothing (clean or used) is laid on the bed, he immediately lays down on it.
He’ll pull my worn bra off my dresser and roll in it, licking it (oooohhh titty residue - dave chappelle show ).
Our other little PITA is Gia (my hubby’s lil’ girl). We have a lot of those little furry mousies you can buy at the supermarket all over the house. Now Gia has never voluntarily made a sound in front of us if she can help it, but will stand over these in the middle of the night meowing her furry head off.
Jespers most annoying habit is he will lick plastic shopping bags, like from Publix or Walmart. I mean NON-STOP. We throw things at him, but he will go right back to it until we make to get up like we’re going to beat his behind and then he takes off running
Lil’ buggers.
When my husband’s cat misses him, she’ll haul a pair of his (used) underwear around the house. Very odd to open the front door and be met with dirty briefs. Never drags the boxers though. She’ll also go nuts over his boots if he’s worn them all day. Acts like it’s catnip, rubbing on them, burying her face deep inside. It’s only a matter of time before the fumes cause permanent brain damage, I tell ya.
She’ll also clean his hair - we think it’s partially her taking care of her “kitten” or just her wanting to fit in with us “big, stupid monkeys”.
That’s a community thing - you’re the alpha male, so the cat is submissive to you, and treats you to a grooming to let you know that you’re the boss. Mine does this by sticking her ass in my face, which is to let me know I can sniff her anal glands. If I want. Usually I decline.
In other words, he’s showing you he “loves” you, in a cat way.
I speculate that having done this for the above reason once or twice when you were asleep, the cat may also have realised that grooming you gets you out of bed, and thus has been conditioned to do it in order to get fed.
Source: The Cat Whisperer - a very interesting book, which explains an awful lot of weird things cats do, although it’s not very well written or illustrated.
My littlest cat loves to play with those little fuzzy balls they have at craft shops, with the mettalic fibers in them. No matter what she’s doing, if you drop one on the floor, she’ll come a runnin’ to start batting it around.
The weird part is that after she’s played with them for a while, she’ll pick them up and drop them into the water bowl on the floor. At first I thought they were just being randomly batted in there, but no, if you take them out, she’ll very deliberately pick them up and put them back in. I think she might be part raccoon.
What your cat is doing is normal. A lot of felines seem to like dragging things around. It’s usually something that’s pretty embarrassing, too. Whatever has the most of your scent on it (or whatever’s had the most, er, juice on it) is usually what gets carried around. I’m lucky that I don’t have to keep my undies under lock and key. With my cats, it’s crackers or anything that can be carried off the kitchen counter. I’m pretty sure they do it because they know they’re not supposed to be up there. They like to grab baggies of snacks and walk around the living room with them, then leave them for me in the morning. They’ve never eaten any of them, but the baggie will have little fang marks from being carried, and the crackers might be a little broken, but that’s it. They also have a stash of balls in the sunroom. They love the velvet and terry cloth balls you can get at a lot of pet stores, and when they’re done playing with one, they’ll carry it to their stash and set it down. Then they’ll sit on this pile of balls like they’re laying eggs. I’m still waiting for them to start squawking like chickens.
OMG! The crackers remind me of another cat that I gave to my ex (they deserved each other ).
We had to keep all bread stuffs in the pantry or it would be toast (sorry, couldn’t resist :D).
She would rip through the bag the second you turned your back.
The one I really remember is climbing out on the odd side of the bed (facing the wall side) and wondering what I just crunched on. I find upon lifting the dust ruffle an entire bag of shredded, stale english muffins.
That’s when I started working on my “Miko the Crack Kitty” comic.
She was cultivating drugs under my bed using stale english muffins for the cultures it produced.
lucretia, those are called “winken balls” here. winken the wonderful loves tinsel balls. she will chew on the for hours, and then sing to the winken ball like a humpback whale. the weirdest sound you ever heard at 3am. she puts her’s in the food dish after play.
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