Here at Cedar Lodge Cattery, our mission is to provide safe, secure, and comfortable surroundings that minimise the stress for our guests, and therefore, ensures an enjoyable stay with plenty to stimulate our guests while their human family is tied up with their own holidays/moving house/family events etc!
While we are only approaching our 2nd birthday being open, we are always looking to improve the guest experience for the cats staying with us. Last year, we came across a discussion on the best cat beds available, and more specifically, the best beds that catteries can offer their guests. Therefore, a search for the best bed started!!
The three main concerns were:
- Provide a safe-haven for all cats to relax in, but more importantly, to ensure that the anxious or nervous cat can feel reassured and safe.
- Allow all guests to enjoy and relax in while wanting some “down-time” in a cattery environment.
- Provide both young and old cats (and everything in between) easy access to the beds,
- Be durable and easily cleaned, particularly for the cattery environment as the bed needs to be able to withstand being “push around” and “played with” by young or boisterous guests, or scratched as part of normal cat behaviour. A thorough clean and disinfection after each guests’ stay is critical.
There are many reviews on the best cat beds to purchase for your cat. One recent review carried out by CatLifeToday.com, reviewed a vast amount of different cat beds, but, of the 5 top-rated cat beds, covered cat beds took both the number 1 and number 2 spots, ahead of even heated beds! Similarly, mypetneedsthat.com places covered beds for cats in their “Premium Pick” for The Best Cat Beds (Review) for 2020. But why do cats prefer covered beds over others?
The nature of the cat has to be taken into consideration. Part of the nature of the large wild cats as well as the domestic cat is that they can be quite territorial (even within their own home environment in a multi-cat family, or where neighbouring cats share some common spaces such as gardens). Therefore, they will like to have their own sleeping space that offers safety, calmness, warmth and comfort.
Keeping in mind that a cattery stay may be new to some cats, they will naturally want to ensure that they themselves, are as safe as possible. An enclosed bed shape will offer security and a safe place to hide if the cats feel unsure of its surroundings and are in need of time to settle in. If not for safety, the enclosed bed offers a secluded place to spend their time dozing, rather than a vast open space, away from the socialization and other stimulating experiences. This “safe” feeling is what we are trying to provide to our guests, regardless of their own personalities being outgoing and confident, or shy and quiet.
Therefore, a covered/enclosed bed is particularly beneficial to the following:
- Young cats who are in need of greater security until such time as their confidence grows.
- Timid or anxious cats that need the help of their physical surroundings to help create security.
- Cats that are experiencing a “new” situation, or one that is different from their day to day regular daily life – such as a cattery.
- Older cats that may not be as agile as they once were, and able to run from a threat, now find themselves seeking out a safe haven more and more to spend the long, lazy hours of sleeping and dozing.
Other considerations we needed to keep in mind were as follows:
- Cats can scratch while stretching and yawning (as, perhaps, just after waking up from asleep). Therefore, durability to withstand some scratches is essential.
- If your cat is elderly or has mobility issues, a bed with a low entry lip would be important.
- In view of the fact that a thorough deep-clean is required between each and every visiting cat here at Cedar Lodge Cattery, we needed a bed that was easy to clean and disinfect.
- Space to curl and/or stretch.
As a result of all the research and considerations that we needed to take account of, we eventually found the
Having said all that, the guests that stay at Cedar Lodge Cattery are given plenty of variety in their suites to rest, be it basking in the evening sunshine on the lookout shelf, lazing about in the elevated hammocks, or, one of the all-time popular hideaways for cats, the humble cardboard box!
