After I have used my bath towel following a shower, my cat, Gabriel, loves the smell of it. He loves to roll around in it and is pleased to be covered by it.
From my understanding of the domestic cat, the reason is because my scent is embedded into the fabric of the towel. Because it is damp the water in it evaporates. When it evaporates the water molecules carry the scent molecules into the atmosphere where they can be smelled more intensely by Gabriel. As the smell of objects and of us is very important to cats and plays a major role in a cat’s life, Gabriel finds that being amongst the scent is enjoyable. He revels in it. He is able to let my scent attach to his fur and to deposit his scent onto the towel. I’d call this a version of scent exchange, a way of making the environment more friendly for the domestic cat.
Does your cat like your recently used bath towel? If so why do you think he/she likes it so much?
Hi Diane. Has something changed in your life or the lives of others in the household? Your cat is urinating on something which strongly contains your scent. For me this is a sign of some stress or anxiety building up in your cat. Is he/she alone more than normal? Any change could cause this or there might be something going on between the cats causing the more submissive one to feel stress. I’d check those things out and remove the cause of stress. The same cat is probably the one who is kneading you a lot. She feels insecure in my opinion. Try and find ways to make her feel more secure and see if you can isolate the cause (if I am correct!). I have never tried it by Feliway might help. Nice photo by the way. Very cute.
I have 2 cats, female and male, spayed and neutered. One of them has just started wetting on my damp bath towel. Not sure which one as I haven’t caught either one doing this yet, but the odor is def urine. The other thing is my female has to sit or lie down on me constantly(kneading then falling asleep) if I’m on the couch or in bed for the night. She’s never done this before. She will be 3 in May and I’m just not sure what’s going on. No change noticed in my male unless he’s the bath towel culprit.
How sweet Elisha. He loves you and likes to be surrounded by your scent. Thanks for commenting.
i’m glad i’m not the only one because my cat likes to sleep on damp towels, he started doing it when he was around 5 yrs old, i will get out the shower and he will follow me up stairs and wait for me to drop my towel then he will snuggle into it and go to sleep … infact he wont even sleep in his bed without a towel.
I don’t! Haha, my sock/underwear theifs name is Cait Sith (named after popular Final Fantasy *video game* Character) as she looks just like him! My hair tye, and bottle lid theifs name is Nollie. She’s the wet or dry towel cat (she also just adores butt cheek pats and tail pulls). My animals are all so strange and different from each other! Such fun personalities like little furry humans! ?
Loved reading this Sarah.
By any chance, you don’t have a cat named Damon?
My Damon is that sort of thief and worse. He keeps 3 hoarding piles of my stuff that smell like me. Granted, some are really rank.
Anymore, I don’t disturb his piles, so I know where to get a hair tie, kitchen towel, or sock.