For the time of a blog, you will be called “Mister cat” or “Miss kitty”, according to the case. The goal here is not to make anthropomorphism or try to get into the cat’s head (which any behaviorist should avoid), but to try to make you see the world from a cat’s perspective and understand the importance of height in his life. Are you ready? You now have 4 legs, whiskers and meow instead of talking.
You are sleeping peacefully when you suddenly hear noise coming from the living room. Then you stretch (not too fast!). You show up in the lounge where your favorite servants … oops … your favorite owners (you know, it’s not polite to call them servants!) are accompanied by children running around the living room. The furniture has been moved to make more place for their unrestrained races.
All this commotion starts very badly your day. First, they have made changes to what is most important to you, your territory. Then, all this activity disrupts your routine, almost as important to you as changes in your territory. Result: you are stressed out. You must regain control of the situation. Despite your very sociable character, you do not know the children who run, so you cannot predict their reactions. You must study them before approaching them.
You then quickly run into the dining room and climb onto the kitchen table. This is your favorite place in the house, to the dissatisfaction of your servants … oops … owners (a habit!). The reason is simple. In most houses, the table is located in a central place where you can see the kitchen, the corridor, the living room, the front door, the door leading to the basement, etc. It is the perfect watch tower to oversee the entire house. If only your owners understood that by placing a cat tree nearby and higher than the table, you would most likely leave it for this cat tree much more interesting.
Now, for several minutes, you analyze the movements and ways of the children and you begin to see that they do not seem very dangerous. To be quite sure, you approach cautiously. You are lucky, because your owners have placed at your disposal a high place in each of the main rooms of the house. Like the time the sister-in-law came with her dog, these heights allowed you to approach the unknown at your own pace, to analyze it safely and thus desensitizing you more quickly. So you’ve reduced your stress.
Obviously, higher the place is, further you can see and you are able to monitor a larger territory and the less you will be stressed out. So you run to the cat tree in the living room and reach it just in time, because one of the children is looking at you. You forgot two things. The first is that this new cat tree is not very stable and you feel it wobble under your weight. You would want to shout at your servants (for that, they do not deserve you to call them owners) this is supposed to be cat tree. A tree!!! It must be well entrenched. However, it is normal that you do not trust a tree that will fall under your weight in the event that you have to leave quickly.
You forgot that you share the house with another cat (easy to forget, she’s an old grump who does not do anything all day long). Fortunately, this cat tree is not like the one in the bedroom where there is only one way to reach the highest shelf. As the old grump always sits on the middle shelf, you must constantly wrangle with her to dislodge her and climb to the top shelf. On the other hand, the living room cat tree makes it possible to reach the upper shelf in several ways, thus avoiding unnecessary fights.
On your watch tower, you bring your attention to the children. Fortunately for you, your owners followed the advice of your human idol, the Cat Educator, and they explained to the children that when you are in the cat tree, they have no right to come and disturb you. Good! This will save you from having to scratch or bite them to have peace.
After a while, the children calm down and sit in the middle of the room. Perched on your cat tree, you see them assemble something. At first, you do not quite understand the utility of these white cubes with several holes in them, but this is intriguing you. It is when the children stack the cubes that you understand. You hear one of your owners say: finally, a cat tree that does not clash with the decor!
Wow! White boxes that form a cat tree! Boxes! The most wonderful invention for you. You can barely control yourself like every time your owners come back from the store with boxes. They do not understand how your ambush hunter nature inexorably attracts you to boxes or anything that looks like it. Being able to see without being seen. They do not know that you are a master in the art of becoming invisible behind a stem of grass. So imagine inside a box!
Moreover, in this new cat tree, there are cushions and toys. And as if it was not enough, the kids place treats around and in the cat tree. You suddenly forget your fear of children and you decide to approach them. Your favorite treats! Great! How can they know that? After all, they are nice children because they give me treats!
Your cat instinct leads you to think that you are being used to talk about a fantastic new product, but you are not sure and you do not care. After all, the Katt3 is a fantastic new cat tree and you have your favorite treats!
You can now become human again. You enjoyed the experience but you cannot continue to be a cat and sleep ¾ of your time and be caressed the rest of the day. Come on, we go back on two legs and go to work to be able to feed the real owner of the house … and I named the cat!
