Thinking Inside the Box
Always looking for a distraction, I gave in and tried the experiment about which cat lovers have gone viral — about a billion times.
If you’re a cat owner, I don’t have to tell you cats are all about free will. They don’t ‘sit” or “stay.” (Neither do I, I’m fairly sure my husband would say.) And they seem to take pride in doing the exact opposite of what you’d like them to.
But when I heard cats will intentionally sit in a fake blue box made from painter’s tape, I had to perform my own (unscientific, but hilarious) test.
Everyone knows cats love to plop down in cozy boxes, and sometimes they barely fit. Animal behaviorists say kittens develop a sense of security when they are tightly lined up feeding on their moms, and 3D boxes offer that kind of security, protection and warmth.
And as it turns out, they respond to the “idea” of boxes too.
I taped the square down in our tiled living room, and our cat Piglet walked over and sat down — dead center. Mukluk followed, but it took a day or two of sniffing and exploring the curious new cat space for her to settle in.
Bottom line? Why a square made out of tape? Well the experts say without actual walls, the blue boundaries represent “the possibility of a box, and for some cats, that’s good enough.”
I may have gotten a little obsessed with the discovery, and decided to try it out with my friend Julia her two cats Max and Nugget. At first they were skeptical, but soon eased into being comfortable in their virtual habitat. Sometimes they compete for the space, and I just laugh — because that’s exactly what I told them to do.
