Photo: Steve Drolet, Creative Commons, some rights reserved
Martha Foley: Here's a question. This is great, because great minds are running in parallel tracks here. I have a cat who gets up on the table, right? I've never had a cat I couldn't keep off the table. This cat is incorrigible, but if I put a box on the table he'll get in the box instead of lying on the table. This is when we're out of the house, the sun is shining, there's the tabletop—he'll get in the box rather than mess up the papers or whatever is on the table. I've never had a cat that was so attached to boxes before.
Curt Stager: I think it is something a cat owner would know and my wife Carrie has had cats for a long time and she asked that—"Why is this so?"—and I hadn't realized it but you start asking around and by gosh it's pretty common. So there is actually an animal behaviorist in the Netherlands who is writing about this and talking about it, speculating about why this might be.
MF: It's that common. I know cats go into paper bags and so on and so forth, but I never realized it was a behavior that they exhibit.
CS: Well now that you mention the paper bag, I do remember a pet cat that was doing that, too. So there are some ideas about it. It's possible that they feel safer in there. You know their ancestors, these subtropical desert-type cats, would mainly be out hunting at night, so maybe they just feel safer if it's hard to be seen. It actually does make them safer if they can't be seen out in the wild, but then they can also watch what's going on in their little hideout, and then they can rush out and grab something if they want, and bring it right back into the safe space. It's like maybe a "comfort zone" kind of thing.
MF: You say there's a scientist that's looking into this and trying to explain why this would be. It's one of those observed phenomena, right?
CS: Yes, it's Claudia Vinke from the Netherlands, and she actually did a few experiments. She would take domestic cats from an animal shelter and give some a box in their cage and some not a box, and according to her data the ones that had the boxes showed lower levels of stress hormones and they adjusted better to the people and things like that.
MF: Kind of like swaddling a baby. It's like a confined space; they feel good. Honestly, my cat will try to get into a box that's way too small for him and he'll have a leg sticking out or his tail will be hanging out—his head will be hanging over the edge of the box. You can't think that's comfortable, but he loves it.
CS: Now that I'm remembering my own cat experiences, it wasn't just go in there and curl up and hide. Some will do that or fall asleep, but this cat was making noise and playing in there. So there's some attraction.
It turns out it's not just domestic cats. You can look on the web for videos of the big cats doing it.
MF: You mean like lions?
CS: Yeah, I made a list of the ones I was able to find on the web. There were lions and tigers and ocelots and pumas and jaguars and leopards. You put a cardboard box in the cage with them and they turn into little kittens, playing in there, and they want to sit in it.
MF: Sweet! So if you're out in the Serengeti somewhere where there are lion, just keep a big box with you. Put it down and the lion will get in there.
CS: And you're safe. So you think, the lion, it must be like their den, but then you think—the lion's den—do they really have dens? You know those African lions, they're usually out in the open—the lion's den thing would be like from the biblical stories, where maybe the king had a pen, let's say the lion's pen, where they would keep them for whatever reason.
MF: That was more for Daniel than for the lion, I think.
CS: It's anybody's guess and there are certainly a lot of people guessing why this is such a widespread thing among cats.
MF: I'm going to ask my cat next time.
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