COMPY

He is not hiding. He picked a seat.

A cat is a predator that is also prey. Out in the open it has to watch every direction at once and it never gets to switch off. Inside a box it watches one opening — and it can still come straight out of it.

You built the same thing out of a chair and a screen. Walls behind you, one thing in front of you. You call it a setup. He calls it a box.

The box works. Somebody measured it.

Shelter cats handed a plain cardboard box settled in faster and scored lower on stress than the ones without one. Same shelter, same food, same people, same week. The only difference was a box.

Nothing was added to their world. Something was taken away from it: the number of directions they had to worry about.

Vinke, Godijn & van der Leij, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2014.

Your room is cold. To him.

A cat is comfortable somewhere around 30 to 36 °C — roughly ten degrees above whatever you set the thermostat to. He is not being dramatic when he takes the warmest small thing in the room.

Cardboard insulates, and four close walls trap the heat he makes himself. You would do the same. You just don't fit.