senses
Sitting on Laptops, TVs and Warm Gadgets
Seeking warmth and closeness
The uncanny knack of settling directly onto a warm laptop keyboard, television top, router or games console — usually the moment you start using it.
Almost every cat owner knows the routine: you sit down to work and your cat promptly drapes itself across the warm laptop, or claims the top of the television or the router as a favourite bed. It can look like deliberate mischief, but the behaviour comes from a simple, powerful drive.
Cats prefer surroundings considerably warmer than we do, and their bodies are tuned to seek out heat. Electronic devices give off a gentle, steady warmth that is irresistibly cosy to a cat, so a laptop, a set-top box or a sun-warmed console becomes prime napping real estate. The flat, slightly raised surface adds to the appeal.
There is often a social element too. Your laptop is warm, it smells of you, and sitting on it plants your cat squarely in the middle of your attention — a combination of heat, familiar scent and companionship that is hard for a comfort-seeking cat to resist. Providing a warm bed or a heated pad nearby can offer a tempting, less inconvenient alternative.
🐾 Most common in
Very common, especially in cooler homes and in short-haired or older cats that feel the cold and actively hunt out warm spots.