Why Is Your Cat Obsessed With Your Suitcase?

My sister’s cat, Bandit, has always been hard to pin down. He’s small and fast and an absolute genius at hiding. Petting him is next to impossible. For me, anyway. And picking him up? I dare not even dream of it. He barely even lets my sister hold him and she and her boyfriend have been his people for the last seven years. When taking him to the vet, they sometimes put out his carrier days in advance, luring him into a false sense of security, and then grab him when it’s time to go. But they take out the suitcase and Bandit is in it so fast you’d think it was made of catnip. Once, from inside the suitcase, he even let me pet him. I mean, I could tell he wasn’t really into it — he had this sort of crazed look in his eyes — but he didn’t want to move, so he let me get in a few good strokes before slapping me with his paw. (Which I fully deserved. Sorry, Bandit. I just couldn’t resist.)

Of course, Bandit isn’t the only cat that loves a good valise. “As soon as [my suitcase] is out, [my cat] is lying on it, sleeping on it, and only leaves it to eat,” writes Reddit user DreamTimeCollector. Indeed, Reddit is full of people sharing stories of feline suitcase obsession. “Our oldest sleeps in my husband's busted up suitcase,” writes little___bones. “It's in our living room, and we'll have to wait till she passes before we can toss it.”

So why are cats so loony for luggage? A lot of people think it is because they know that a suitcase means their person is about to leave and they don’t want them to go. “Our cat, Emma, hates my wife's suitcase,” writes SVAuspicious. “My wife is Emma's person. Emma knows when her suitcase comes out that my wife is leaving. So Emma goes and sits in it. My wife sort of packs around her and nudges her out of the way. I think Emma hopes that if she tries hard enough my wife won't leave.“

“We can’t even pack until our kitties are dropped at the boarder’s,” writes thedrswife. “They become so upset and cry. It’s awful!” 

Other people are convinced that their cats actually want to come with them. My sister, for one, loves to say that Bandit crawls into her suitcase because he’s hoping to join her on one of our many cross-country trips. And I will admit I’ve harbored similar fantasies about my own cats. Doesn’t everyone? After all, we miss our cats when we travel and if the journeys weren’t so arduous for them — stuck in a tiny carrier for hours on end without access to a proper litter box — many of us would probably love to bring them along. I know I would. And it’s nice to think our cats share this desire. 

“It’s possible that they want to come with you,” says feline behavior expert and trainer Stephen Quandt of CatBehaviorHelp.com. It’s also possible that they just like the shape and feel of your suitcase. “A suitcase is really just another type of box, and we know how much cats like boxes. It’s also possible that they like the pressure of the sides of the suitcase holding them in. Probably because it reminds them of the feeling of laying next to their mothers.”

Quandt suspects it also might have something to do with our clothes. Clothes smell like us, especially if they’re not fresh-out-of-the-laundry clean, so it could very well be that your cat just wants to be close to a bunch of soft things that smell like you. 

It’s also possible that their affection for you could lead them to do things that you might be tempted to interpret as acts of defiance, like peeing in your suitcase. “There’s a thing called associative marking,” says Quandt. “Cats mark your clothing or bed or items that come and go from the house as a means of deepening the bond between the two of you.”

This might sound weird, but bodily functions like peeing and defecating in specific places are an important part of how cats mark their territory and communicate in the wild. It’s tempting to see these acts as some sort of condemnation of your behavior — How dare you go on a trip without them! — but cats are not vindictive creatures. That’s not how their brains work. Instead, they have needs and a limited number of tools for communicating those needs to humans. So maybe they worry when you leave that you won’t come back and they mark your suitcase to remind you of them, deepening your bond through associative marking, as Quandt says. 

“I used to travel a lot for work, and my cat Jane would always pee in or on my suitcases,” says Dinae, a former corporate consultant in New York. “But then I switched jobs and stopped traveling as much and now she just leaves them alone. They’re not locked up or anything. They’re just chilling in my closet and she hasn’t peed on them since.”

Not traveling isn’t always an option, though. So if you notice that your cat is acting out in a negative or destructive way when you take out your suitcase, it might be worth asking yourself how their life is different without you there and how you can help even things out for them. You doubtless have someone coming by daily to feed them and clean their litter box, but maybe you can get a friend to come stay with them full time, so they aren’t forced to spend so much time alone. Or, if you have a partner or roommate who is taking care of them, maybe you can encourage that person to give the cat a little more enrichment and/or affection throughout the day to help make up for your absence.

Of course, when you return, your cat might not care about your suitcase at all. Bandit certainly doesn’t. He’s in it day and night while she’s packing, but as soon as she gets back, he couldn’t care less. Maybe because he has her again. Or maybe it’s something else. It’s impossible to know for sure what a cat is thinking. And even though Bandit doesn’t care much for a returning suitcase, other cats are just as excited whether it’s coming or going. Some cats will even fight over which of them gets to sit in or on top of the newly returned suitcase. Cats are funny like that. How fortunate that we get to share our homes with them.