Where cats...and dogs...sleep

I can still remember the form I filled out when I adopted my dear doggie, Jake, back in 1995. “Where will he sleep?” the paperwork asked. “Anywhere he wants to!” I wrote down.

So Jake came home and immediately decided sleeping on my bed was heaven...until he discovered the floor-to-ceiling window across from the bed! A large framework sat on the deck that was below that window. Squirrels, chipmunks and birds ran along the beams, often coming nose to nose with Jake as he looked out of his window on the world.

It was his sacred space – safe, cool and wildly entertaining. In the last months of his life, when his legs were wobbly and his eyesight was failing, Jake’s bed was his favorite place – his security blanket.

It is completely different with my four cats! Dickens and his sisters - Molly, Pippen and Star - are constantly changing their favorite little nesting spots. While this shouldn’t be a problem, it does impact my nightly ritual of checking on the cats before I go to bed. The chair Dickens may have slept on for the last month is cat-less, and my big boy is nowhere to be found. The kitchen drawer that holds the aluminum foil - one of Star’s regular sleeping spots - is empty, and a top-to-bottom search of the house leaves me with no clue as to where she might be.

One night last week I had finished the regular cat round-up and, once again, Star was missing. I searched three times behind, under and in-between every appliance or piece of furniture in the house – no luck. I went back to the top of the house to begin search #4, and noticed one of the drawers in the closet was open about 2”. Could it possibly be?

Somehow she had squeezed her way into that incredibly small opening, and was fast asleep in my sock drawer.

So, here’s my question – WHY DO CATS DO THIS?

Chris