Cat Itecture: Better Cat Window Boxes

Summary

Cats are not humans, but we design things like they are, for our convenience. What are the design patterns for cat-architecture? One missing design pattern: progressive concealment, for cat ledges, flaps & window boxes. I suggest that cats have innate sensory preferences that existing cat-architecture (like ‘cat window boxes’) is blind to, and so fails to accommodate: while driven to monitor the outside world, they are highly sensitive to risk and personal exposure, and want to constantly adjust how much they can see or hear, or be seen or heard. This essay proposes non-anthropocentric principles for cat-friendly architecture flowing from a cat’s-eye-view. Thoughtful cat-itecture enriches cats’ environments with: options of gradation, prioritizing soundscapes over sight-lines, and simplicity of use. Current cat enclosures like window boxes are all-or-nothing designs which, while good for ventilation or simple construction, expose cats to extremes of exposure at the cost of control over their visibility or the intensity of sound/sight. Applying these principles could improve cat window boxes through features like sound baffling, opaque retreats, and clear vantages that balance seclusion and stimulation. By looking through a cat’s eyes and listening, we can create spaces that reflect a cat’s world. To help my increasingly-elderly cat get to his cat-flap, I installed a ramp of cinderblocks on the inside & outside. The ramp worked well, and had the unexpected benefit of giving him more options in approaching the cat-flap beyond just ‘on’ or ‘off’, so I could watch how he would approach the cat-flap over the course of the day. What I noticed was something I’d suspected for a while: he acted like he had a ‘novelty’ or ‘risk compensation’ drive akin to temperature or hunger or thirst, where he craved a certain slowly-changing optimal degree of risk/stimulation, and would adjust his position to maintain his position on the inverted U-curve. This outside-observation drive wo...