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Cat Bed

Choosing One for the Cat Nap

Apr 15, 2009 Ian Dutton

Cats sleep a lot and sometimes their favourite place is not a keeper-approved one. Using the right criteria to select and introduce a cat bed might help.

Cats spend as much as fifteen hours per day sleeping, roughly twice as much as humans. When they are shedding their coat, this can mean cat hair everywhere. Humans' beds or the furniture may not be ideal in some homes. Kittens allowed to sleep on their keeper's bed for only two nights will take some persuading to change, so a cat bed can be a useful early investment.

Cats sometimes sleep in the most inappropriate places. It is worth considering placing several cat beds around the home in order to encourage a pet cat to sleep in selected safe areas, or to suit homes with more than one cat. With multiple cats, extra cat beds are again a good idea, to provide alternatives and reduce squabbles.

With the wide variety of cat beds available, finding one that suits the cat's keeper is not going to be difficult. However, as everyone familiar with cats knows, they can be choosy about all kinds of things and where they sleep will certainly be one of the most important ones.

Security and Warmth

These are the cat's prime requirements. A key aspect of security for a cat is height, which is one of the reasons why some cats will sleep on top of high cupboards. Cat beds are best positioned off the floor, on a shelf or even a table may be suitable in some cases. One type of cat bed, known as a cat perch, is made to be attached to draught-free window sills. Cat beds are also best positioned away from busy areas of the home.

Heated cat beds are also available and can be particularly favoured by short-haired or elderly cats, but normally any cosy type, including enclosed ones or igloo types, will be sufficient as a suitable cat den. In any cat bed, high sides are pre-requisite, providing warmth and encouraging a feeling of security.

One sign of a cat feeling both warm and secure is it sleeping with its body in a very open shape, for example with legs outstretched or on its back.

Persuading The Cat To Use The Cat Bed

Some experimentation with location may well be required. It is also often the case that a pet cat, after being wary of the new cat bed for a couple of days, warms to it once familiar with its appearance and location.

Catnip toys are often used successfully to entice the cat on to the cat bed and to stay there, often with a little affection and humouring added in copious measures.

Adding blankets to a cat bed is sometimes required to form part of the successful persuasion technique.

The copyright of the article Cat Bed in Cats is owned by Ian Dutton. Permission to republish Cat Bed in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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