Cats and the Bed Game: Why Changing Sheets is So Much Fun
It may sound crazy to people who don’t have cats, but when you change your sheets, you are making a “call to the wild”—an irresistible sound that alerts your cat that a great adventure is about to begin.
The minute you start changing the sheets, most cats have a sheet-changing radar that goes off. They come running.
I’m not alone. Ask the internet about cats and changing sheets, and you’ll find hundreds of people who agree. Start changing the sheets and the cats come running.
And like the people on social media, I don’t care how long it takes to change the sheets. Seeing the pure delight our cats got from the bed game, we would play as long as they wished. It’s a lot more fun than watching another rerun of Wheel of Fortune. Besides, it gets us a little exercise.
Apparently, there is a scientific explanation for all this. The billowing fabric, rustling sounds, movement, and new scents provide sensory stimulation and may trigger a cat’s natural hunting instincts.
Naturally, I asked Gemini why. Gemini explained that when cotton or linen rubs together, it produces a high-pitched scratching or crinkling sound. To a cat, apparently, it can resemble a rodent scrambling through dry leaves, grass, or paper.
Hmm. I wonder which scientist actually measured the frequency of a sheet rubbing against another sheet and compared it with a mouse.
Gemini even produced a table comparing the characteristics of sheet rustling with mice and birds. Really? That’s just TMI. Although, now that I think about it, maybe I could use that information to tempt Patsy into playing the bed game.
Most of my cats have loved some version of the bed game.
Tasha and Misty loved to pounce on the sheet mountains that formed when I first flung the sheet over the bed. I would ruffle the sheet to make little waves, and they would pounce on them, flattening the mountains and capturing whatever imaginary prey was hiding underneath. Of course, there was no prey. But they didn’t know that. Or perhaps they did. Cats are very good at pretending to believe whatever makes the game more interesting.
When Mandy was a kitten, she had a strange version of the bed game that didn’t involve sheets. She’d race upside down beneath the bed, using her claws to propel herself across the box springs. As far as Mandy was concerned, she had her own private racetrack.
Casey loved to play Sheet Shark. He would run between the fitted and top sheets, disappearing completely. We would scratch one spot on the bed, and he would dash toward it. Scratch somewhere else, and he would race across the bed after that.
Experts say the space between the sheets creates a safe, enclosed tunnel where a cat can hide while preparing for a tactical ambush.
And we all know that if a cat can’t see us, she assumes we can’t see her.
Apparently, that rule applies even when her entire tail is sticking out.
Then there’s Patsy, our new cat. She is almost three, and we’ve had her for about a year and a half. She doesn’t seem to have any interest in the bed game. When I make the bed, I try to entice her by making sheet hills or rustling the covers. She looks at me, and then looks at the lump. Then she looks back at me with those scrunched-up cat eyes. I may be imagining it, but her expression seemed to say, “Seriously? You want me to play with a sheet?
It turns out Patsy does have her own version of the bed game. She just prefers Amazon packaging. You know those long strips of crinkly brown paper that Amazon uses to keep things from rattling around in the box? We always seem to have one or two lying on the floor. Patsy loves them.
The minute she spots one, she takes off, sliding across the floor like a baseball player trying to beat the throw to home plate. I suspect the crinkling sound is part of the attraction.
She also likes to hide in the folds of the paper, waiting for us to walk by so she can launch an ambush. And if I crinkle the paper myself, she comes running.
I’ve discovered that I can make the game even better by hiding her toys in the folds where the paper doesn’t lie flat. I leave just the tip of a mouse’s tail sticking out.
Patsy knows exactly what that means. She dives in, attacks the tail, and then wrestles with the paper as if she has just captured the world’s most dangerous prey.
So perhaps Patsy isn’t rejecting the bed game after all. She has simply redesigned it. For Patsy, it’s not sheets. It’s Amazon.
A Video You’ll Love:
Making a Bed With Cats Around, YouTube, Cole and Marmalade. Note, Marmalade is an orange tabby just like Casey. Perhaps orange tabbies love playing sheet shark.
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