Do Cats Like Cat Beds?

When you are looking into becoming a pet owner, it would make sense that you would want to spoil your pet as much as you can. Through treats, toys, and accessories that will make your pet’s life as enjoyable as possible, there are more than a few ways that you can give your pet the life that they deserve. However, you will always want to make sure that when you are purchasing accessories for your pets, they are more for the pet than they are for you. For instance, when you purchase food bowls for your cat, you can certainly choose whatever design you want, but you should make sure that the bowls are decent quality and durable. This applies to anything that you would purchase for your pets, especially accessories such as cat beds.

While it might seem as if it would be natural to purchase a bed for your cat, many cats will actually completely reject the idea of cat beds and will opt to sleep wherever else they please. This then begs the question of whether or not cats like cat beds. The truth of the matter is that it depends heavily on your cat’s attitude and how it responds to new things. Some cats absolutely adore cat beds when they are placed in the right areas and are made out of the right materials. Other cats couldn’t care less about the beds and will opt to sleep in cardboard boxes instead.

If you are worried about the idea of your cat not enjoying the cat bed that you purchased for it, there are a few things that you can do to try and make the cat bed more appealing to your cat. In general, you will want to know your cat well enough to know what it appreciates in terms of sleeping location, sleeping materials, and so on. With newer cats, you might want to let them feel comfortable in the house before you purchase large and expensive items for them, so you can also get a better idea on what those cats appreciate.

Getting to Know Your Cat’s Sleeping Habits

When you remove the factors of what a cat is used to and what a cat knows in its home, cats will often opt for a comfortable cat bed rather than sleeping on the cold, hard ground. The problem with this is that the cat bed needs to reach the standards of your cat, and figuring out what those standards are isn’t easy. There are a few key things to note about your cat’s sleeping habits when choosing a new bed for the cat. You will want to think about where the cat chooses to sleep, such as on the counter, on a table, on your bed, or on top of the wardrobe. You will want to think about what material the cat tends to prefer for sleep, such as a hard surface or plush blankets. You will also need to consider if anything the cat is sleeping on has a strong scent, as you will need to factor this in when you are customizing the cat bed for your cat’s needs.

First things first, when you are thinking about where your cat chooses to sleep, you are going to be planning out the best placement for the cat bed. Even if some of these locations aren’t going to be the best in the long-term, your goal for this is to get the cat acquainted and used to the cat bed. Once the cat recognizes the bed as a bed and chooses to use it as such, then you can begin slowly moving the accepted bed toward an area that will be better-suited for the house. To make sure that your cat notices and chooses to use the cat bed, you will want to place that bed in an area where the cat has routinely shown to want to sleep.

After that, you will want to think about the surface surrounding where your cat normally sleeps. All cats will have different preferences as to where the best place to sleep is. Some cats prefer to make themselves hidden, sleeping in areas that hide the cat from the naked eye. Other cats may simply want to feel a nice, sturdy surface beneath their fur while they sleep. These aspects are going to be important, as you will want to consider them when you are customizing the cat bed to fit your cat’s needs. A good example of this is when cats enjoy sleeping in areas and positions that make them “hidden,” you would purchase an igloo-type bed to create that same feeling. If a cat enjoys sleeping on beds, you may want to purchase a pillowcase to put on top of the cat bed so that it holds the same feeling as bed sheets. Doing these things will help your cat want to sleep in its cat bed, which it will most likely enjoy if you are going this far out of your way to customize it.

Last, but most certainly not least, you will want to think about how the bed smells to the cat. Cats, with a sensitive nose by nature, are not going to be inclined to sleep on a bed that smells strange and unfamiliar to the cat, even if the bed would be something that the cat wants to sleep on. If you want to make sure that the cat bed is something that the cat wants to sleep on, you will want to try and give it the same scent as other areas where the cat sleeps. For instance, if your cat sleeps on your clothes regularly, you will want to give the bed the smell of you. You can hold and carry the bed around for a day, or you can put some dirty clothes on it to help entice your cat. If your cat is interested in the bed, then this will help coax that interest out, allowing the cat to enjoy the bed that you bought for it.

More often than not, cats really do want to sleep on the beds that their people get them, the problems occur when those beds simply do not live up to the cat’s standards. By making sure that the bed is up to standards, you can expect that your cats will be sleeping on the bed on a regular basis.