Why do cats love boxes and walking around in little circles before sitting down? And do they really love their owners, or do they just want food?
"Why do cats love sitting in boxes so much?"
It's all about security and getting a good vantage point. "When a cat rests it basically wants to feel protected, but it also needs to have some way of looking out," says Bradshaw.
He's actually conducted experiments at animal shelters to find out what kind of box cats that had recently come into the shelter liked best. Turns out upside-down boxes with holes cut in them are the fave. "The cat will go in and peer out for a period of time," says Bradshaw. "When the cat gets more confident it may actually rest on top of the box, especially if the box is in a corner."
The other thing about boxes is that they're often new and temporary additions to your cat's territory. "It's their natural instinct to explore anything new, so they'll jump straight in and settle down in it."
That instinct might also be why cats appear to go and sit in circles when you draw one on the floor. "To get yourself inside a cat's head you have to remember that cats use their ears and noses much more than we do, so what to us is just a circle may not be a circle as far as the cats concerned," says Bradshaw. "The cat may be interpreting it as 'Here's a place on the floor that doesn't smell like it did five minutes ago; I'll go and sit down and see what happens.'"
(But the circle thing could also be confirmation bias, Bradshaw cautions. If you draw a circle and your cat doesn't go and sit inside it, you're probably not going to tell the internet about it, are you?)
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