Squeezing Into Impossibly Small Spaces

Few feline habits are as reliably comic as a cat folding itself into a space that seems physically impossible — a box half its size, a fruit bowl, a shoe, a sink. The internet is full of cats overflowing the rims of containers they have no business fitting into, and the phenomenon is often summed up by the phrase 'if it fits, I sits'.

Behind the comedy is a genuine instinct. In the wild, a small, enclosed space with walls pressing in on several sides is a safe place: it hides a cat from predators, shelters it from draughts and lets it keep watch over a single, defensible opening. That gentle, all-round pressure is reassuring to a cat in the same way swaddling calms an infant, and the snugness also helps a cat conserve body heat, which matters to an animal that likes to be warm. A tight container ticks every one of those boxes at once.

Cats are also built to exploit small gaps. They have no rigid collarbone locking the shoulders in place, and a lithe, flexible spine, so they can compress themselves through and into openings that look impossibly narrow — if the head fits, the rest usually follows. Put the instinct for security together with a body that can pour itself into almost anything, and you get a cat blissfully wedged into a container three sizes too small. It is normal, healthy and endearing. The only time to look twice is if a cat suddenly starts hiding away far more than usual, in odd or hard-to-reach spots, as a marked increase in hiding can be a sign that a cat feels unwell or stressed.