Our outdoor cat, Sabrina, lives in a little plywood house-on-legs I built her, with a “Beware the Cat” sign and a heating pad on the floor and piles of old towels to make a little nest. She loves it: Warm and cozy in the winter, it seems she’s always in there. And just recently, in the last three months or so, she’s discovered that you can get under a towel and be even warmer and cozier. I don’t know how she figured it out; perhaps it was serendipity; maybe she was rearranging her furniture and a towel slumped down on top of her.
Anyway, it’s very interesting to see how she uses this new discovery; we’ll peek in through her picture window and there’ll be a towel with a lump under it, a black furry head peeking out. I tell Mrs. R that she’s discovered the Magic of Blankets. What’s next, will she discover the wheel? Hopefully the discovery of fire is beyond her ability…
We have 2 felines - one absolutely loves burrowing under our comforter or under whatever I happen to be knitting when I’m in my recliner. The other one, not so much. Cats is weird!
When we first rescued our miniature pinscher from the freezing weather I looked up on the Internet to learn about them. One of the things it mentioned was that they like to burrow in blankets. The wife found a baby blanket in the closet and carried it into the room where he was happily laying. I have never seen such a joyous reaction from an animal. Hopping up and down like crazy until she gave him the blankee. He then expertly tossed it into the air like a pizza chef until it draped on him. They he spun a round a few times to get it just right. He knew what he was doing.
Geez, tough crowd! I’ve wandered out to her house three times today, camera primed, but of course, being a cat, she’s not cooperating. :rolleyes: I hate to disappoint Gatopescado, but the house is nothing wonderful; just a plywood box on stilts, with a feeding platform underneath. The flat roof is hinged for access, and there’s a hinged plexiglas window on the end facing the kitchen, so we can see if she’s in, and reach in to scratch her ears when we bring Her Majesty her meals.
Our female cat, Hestia, discovered that its nice and warm under our bedcover. She’ll burrow underneath and get into the “tent” formed where the cover goes from the pillow to the bed – only on Pepper mill’s side, of course, and sleep there much of the day. Sometimes I’ll pet her through the cover and get an annoyed grunt from underneath.
Sometimes our male cat, Hermes, will jump up on the bed, happy that Hestia isn’t there to claim it, but he always looks at the angle between the pillows and the bed, looking for suspicious lumps. If he’s in doubt whether she’s under there, he’ll gingerly probe it with a tentative paw.
At last, a picture for you doubters! Sabrina under a blanket (towel). You can see one pointed black ear sticking up just in front of the white triangle of light. The picture is covered with hairs because I was photographing her through the plexiglas door of her Cat House.
There have been many mornings when my alarm clock has gone off to find my cat sound asleep either between my legs or curled up against my butt. She discovered this as a kitten and it is a regular part of her routine when the weather gets cold outside.
This past weekend I could not find the cat anywhere. She will hide if anything startles her, and with her issues everything startles her.
I tore through the basement, thoroughly went through the bedrooms, the closets, the cupboards. Called her multiple times. Nothing. I even searched the breezeway and garage, even though she is terrified of the outdoors.
I opened the linen closet to grab a washcloth (needed to cool myself down from slightly freaking out) and heard a muffled “mrrff?”
She had burrowed into the stacks of towels. I said her name and her tail poked out, twitching with irritation.
This has happened to me with every cat I’ve ever had. You can’t find them anywhere. You’re sure they’ve gotten out or been stolen by pirates or something. Then after turning the house upside down you either find them burrowed in somewhere, or sometimes they just walk Out of the Nowhere Into the Here. Twilight Zone music
And once you’ve figured out that spot: they’ll use it for a while.
And then one day the cat will find a New Spot, which will be at least as difficult to find.
(no, not in that box, though he was here earlier, look at all that fur; no, not in this box; no, not in the basket up out of line of sight that the other cat used to love; no, not behind the couch – what is that faint snore coming from inside that closed box of books in the library, which I thought was too full of books to also hold a cat?? Aha!)
