Why Are Cats Obsessed With Suitcases?

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 past seven years. When taking him to the vet, they sometimes put out his carrier days in advance, lure him into a false sense of security, and then grab him when it’s time to go.

But when they take out the suitcase before a trip, 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 wild 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.)

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Of course, Bandit isn’t the only cat who 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,” Reddit user DreamTimeCollector writes. Indeed, Reddit is full of people sharing stories of feline suitcase obsession. “Our oldest sleeps in my husband’s busted up suitcase,” little___bones writes. “It’s in our living room, and we’ll have to wait till [sic] she passes before we can toss it.”

So, why are cats so into 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 on Reddit. “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.”

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

Do they actually want to go on a trip?

Other people are convinced that their cats 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. 

Or are they trying to send some other sort of message?

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,” Quandt says. “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 pooping 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 that when you leave that you won’t come back. Using that logic, they mark your suitcase to remind you of them.

“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 your partner or roommate is taking care of them, 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 my sister is 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 super stoked about a bag that’s about to be unpacked. Some cats will even fight each other over which of them gets to sit in or on top of the newly returned suitcase. Cats are funny like that. How fortunate we are that we get to share our homes with them.