Two of the benefits of being old and retired are the gentle arts of napping. I don’t take a nap every single day. I may take a nap two or three times a week. Not always at the same time of day. And not always in my bed, sometimes I’ll nap on the sofa. I’ve always been one to nap on Saturday afternoon. Oddly, and apropo of nothing, I never took naps as a child.
One of my cats always finds me within 5 minutes of my lying down to nap, and she jumps up on me. Which I love. I like that she sleeps with me, and I like that she sleeps on me. What I can’t quite figure out is how she always knows when I’m napping.
These days I live in an 840 square foot apartment, so a person might say all she has to do is look around and see that you’re not immediately visible so it’s easy to conclude you’re in at least one of three rooms. But she can be curled up sound asleep in the living room, and I’ll go in the bedroom and lie down on the bed, and within 5 minutes she is up on the bed with me.
When I lived in my house, she might be outside all the way in the backyard curled up in the shade. Or she might be under the house. I would come in and lie down on my bed and within a few minutes, she will have come in through the kitty door and jumped up on the bed with me.
Radar? Clairvoyance? Does she have an air tag concealed somewhere on me? No, I think it’s telepathy.
Do any of your pets exhibit signs of pet telepathy?
Bayliss (dog) is very empathetic and watches me closely. He knows when I’m anxious, upset or happy. Sometimes he seems a little confused but he hangs in there til he’s figured it out.
My Siamese may be seers. (Clairvoyant).
I see them looking for my corner ghost all the time.
And clacking at invisible things.
As far as telepathy yeah I figure they are. Or just very clever. All the pets (3 dogs, 2 cats) hit my bedroom when I sleep. I, in essence live in their bedroom. I’m the odd one.
Cat Primus knows where you are because it’s in her interest to do so - we have access to the fud, and she WANTS it. Seeing one of us feeble hoo-mans napping is a sign that we are tired, weak, and can be manipulated into giving extra food for peace and quiet. Or… if she’s tired, she’ll snug up to the napper and steal their body heat which is good for my wife (who’s always cold and will share) and bad for me (who’s always warm but enjoys the cat-cuddle anyway).
Cat Secundus is seriously co-dependent and will follow his mother from room to room unless he’s actively asleep. Seeing his mommy but being unable to be near her will activate the wail-o-tron! Otherwise, if mommy is sleeping, it is an absolute must to sleep on or next to mommy. Woe betide any who lock him away from his mother, for the caterwauling Will Not Stop.
So, take your pick, smart and observant, or desperate and demanding.
I’ve had multiple cats, and while most didn’t care, there were two who would always find me during an afternoon nap. Both would cuddle up to me at such times.
I put it down to the TV. If it was on, they’d be themselves, wherever. But if it was off, it was a signal that I was napping or asleep in the bedroom, which is when they would come in and cuddle up. Nothing more than that.
Cats have super-villain grade senses, especially when it comes to hearing. Just imagine the sound of a can opener, and your cat will materialize from thin air, demanding a treat like a furry overlord.
I have five cats—each one a little dictator in fur. Every morning, they emerge from the shadows the moment my hand even hovers near the can opener lever, not begging, but demanding food. Heaven forbid they don’t get fed within thirty seconds—my blood is on the line.
Benny, my cantankerous Korat cat, has a peculiar passion for corn chips and potato chips. Pretzels? Not even on his radar. I stash bags of all three in my bedroom closet because, honestly, who doesn’t want a midnight snack without a trek to the kitchen?
Benny sleeps on my bed. He can be in the deepest of feline comas, but the faintest crinkle of a chip bag brings him to life faster than you can say, “What the f@%k?” Before I can even blink, he’s perched on the closet shelf, staring at me with those big, imploring eyes and softly pawing at my hand until I surrender and place a chip into his eager mouth. If it’s the pretzel bag crinkling, though, he remains blissfully comatose in kitty dreamland. How his brain distinguishes between the chip bag and pretzel bag, which sound identical to me, is one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Cats’ hearing is uncannily precise. My theory? Your cat has honed in on some distinct noise that signals your nap time. Maybe it’s the faint creak of the bed or sofa springs, or perhaps the subtle crack of your knees as you bend into bed. Whatever it is, they’re tuned in like a highly sophisticated (and slightly evil) surveillance system.
This makes sense. I can believe that she recognizes my breathing patterns, especially within this small apartment. But how did she hear my breathing pattern before the apartment when she was outside, 200 ft away at the very back of my backyard, or when she was under the house?
The pop top of the cat food can or the rattle of the kibble bag- - I definitely get that they recognize those. And meal times happen at predictable intervals during the day. They absolutely have me trained on that one. Their behavior is pretty predictable, just like mine, and in fact one of the ways that you know something is wrong is when they do something completely unpredictable. They sit in some new place where they’ve never sat before, and things like that.
We all snore louder than we care to admit, and more so with age.
And you say the cat comes within five minutes of you napping, but when you nap you lose the sense of time. It may well be six minutes. Or ten seconds.
In addition to knowing when I’m going to take a nap, my cat has the uncanny ability to know exactly when I’m about to get off the sofa. This is his cue to jump up onto my lap and start butting his head against me.
My cat got fairly clingy and needy in her old age, and my theory is that this is at least partly because her hearing was no longer acute enough that she knew where her people were and what they were doing when they were in a different part of the house.
The first cat after I stopped living with my parents:
I took a trip around the country. I was gone for a year. I left her in the care of friends of mine. When I was most of the way back home, I called and told them I’d be home on one of three days, but I didn’t know which one. (It was the 1970’s. No, I wasn’t carrying a phone.)
I didn’t get there on the first day, when my friends would have started expecting me. And I didn’t get there on the last day, when they would have figured I must be coming that day as I wouldn’t have shown up on either of the first two. I got there on the day in the middle, when they had no reason to be more expectant than on either of the other two days.
When I got there, my friends told me they had indeed known I was coming that day – because first thing that morning, that cat started to yowl, and she didn’t shut up until I pulled into the drive. (At which point she did shut up. And as soon as I was out of the car and safely up on the porch, she turned her back on me and headed pointedly to the cat pan.)
I asked what time she started yowling. It was when I was getting out of bed, a four-hour drive away in a different state, from where she couldn’t possibly have heard the car; and undoubtedly I was thinking, I’m going to be home today.
I don’t think I believe in telepathy. But I’ve never come up with a different explanation for that one.
That’s possible. They’ve got better hearing than we do; and often have senses functioning when they appear sound asleep. And you’re not a couple of hundred miles away. I don’t think that even cats have hearing that good.
Over the centuries, humans have had many rationalizations for what they experience during hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. (That’s the weird experience you can have when the paralysis that normally keeps you from thrashing and falling out of bed during your dreams gets out of synch with waking and dozing, so you can’t move but you aren’t quite asleep. Sleepwalking is the opposite problem - you are asleep, and you’re still moving around, too.)
In the Dark Ages, they experienced it as incubus or succubus attacks - a devil came and pinned you to the bed for vile purposes. Or it was cats, stealing your breath or your life essence.
During the Satanic Panic, it was perceived as covens of witches pinning you to the bed to perform vile rituals over you. Your therapist would hypnotize you and help ‘recover’ your memories of the event. Or it was cats again.
During UFO hysteria, it is perceived as aliens paralyzing and abducting you to perform vile probes of your anatomy. Again, your therapist could hypnotize you and help ‘recover’ your memories of these events. Or it was cats. Still.
It has become clear to me that cats can perceive and manipulate the Dreamtime. They are the cause of hypnogogic experiences. They know when you are asleep, and when they pin you to the bed for their vile purposes, they can fool you into blaming demons, witches, or aliens.
Don’t you realize twelve cats plus you equals a cabal and all kinds of hell could break loose by ignoring the sacred number? The only reason you’re still alive is the familiars would have to find another patsy to make thirteen. Be careful, friend, be very careful; you’re messing with forces beyond your ken… .
I think you’re both wrong, oh, not in who the owner is, but taking @Retzbu_Tox’s theory into consideration, we must assume that likely no more than 3-4 cats own him. They’ve just used their powers, combined with chronic sleep deprivation and illusion casting to convince them that there are 12 cats. The actual cats are just collecting the additional food with huge cat-grins, and any “mistakes” that get left (cat barf, dead insects, broken ceramic or glasses and the like) are blamed on one of the “phantom” cats.
An additional point. Your theory ties back to the OP - how do they know when you’re taking a nap? You aren’t taking a nap, you’re having a nap on order. Of course they know when…
Excuse me, a house panther has informed me I’m in violation of my NDA again.
They aren’t manipulating the Dreamtime! They control sleep itself!