Why Are Cats So Obsessed With Shoes?

When I was a teenager, I often found my cat Fremont sleeping on top of the shoes in my closet. It was one of his favorite spots to rest, and I always felt a little guilty taking them away from him when I left the house. I thought it was just one of his little quirks — like how he climbed my chest of drawers as if bouldering, rather than merely jumping up like a normal cat — but, 10 years later, my cat Yoshi also expressed an affinity for my shoes, rolling around on the floor beside them, inspecting them, and playing with the laces.

Maybe it was just those two cats, I thought, or perhaps I just have really delightfully smelling shoes? Or was this part of some widespread footwear fascination of which no one had ever told me? Surely not!

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Apparently, some cats really love shoes.

“I call it a feline foot fetish,” says feline behavior expert and trainer Stephen Quandt of CatBehaviorHelp.com. He’s joking, of course, but it turns out a lot of cats love their person’s shoes. “Your shoes carry the scent of you, but stronger, more pungent, and they like that,” he says. So, I wasn't totally wrong.

Quandt likes watching his cats interact with his shoes, too, and will sometimes heighten their experience by sprinkling a small amount of catnip over them. It’s a little messy, but it’s worth it to increase their enjoyment and add a little excitement to their day.

“Shoes are also one of the few things that come and go from your house and have the smell of the outdoors on them, particularly the soil and grass,” he says. I guess that explains why my cat Yoshi was always more interested in my shoes after I’d been to the park.

“In a way, the scent of your shoes is like an Oreo, where the outside smells like the world and the inside smells like you. You’re the cream,” he adds with a big laugh. 

OK, but aren't there better places to nap?

But why sleep on them like Fremont was so fond of doing? It can’t be comfortable. “When cats are around something long enough, eventually they get tired and then they just sleep where they are,” Quandt says. 

In general, Fremont preferred to sleep on the shoes I didn’t wear as often, like the worn-out sneakers I wasn’t quite prepared to throw away. I imagine that was because he was able to mold them somewhat to fit his body. And after I went off to college, I would come back on breaks to find a thick mat of hair covering the old shoes I had left behind. 

What is up with using them as a litter box?

Not all cats’ shoe obsessions are so benign and adorable, though. Some cats may pee on shoes or give them a good chew when you’re not looking. My cat Yoshi peed on my shoes once. I’d adopted him from Animal Care Centers of New York (ACC) about two months prior, then I moved apartments, and left him for over a week with my sister while I went to Hawaii for work. When I came back, he peed on my shoes while staring right at me. I was upset at first, but then I found it funny. I thought he was punishing me for all the upheaval, but that’s probably not the case.

Quandt weighs in: “Cats can sometimes do what’s called associative marking, which is where they mark your bed or clothing or items that come and go from the house [like your shoes], in order to improve their relationship with you and strengthen the bond between you.”

That might seem counterintuitive, but it’s important to remember that cats, like all pets, have a very limited set of tools for communicating with us. Just because we don’t like something they are doing — whether it’s peeing on our shoes or pooping in the tub or biting our toes through the blanket — doesn’t mean it is their intention to upset us. That’s not really how a cat’s brain works. And though we can never know for sure what a cat is thinking, it is certainly more gracious and loving of us to see these acts as an attempt to bond than as an act of vengeance for something we have or have not done. 

And why do they think our favorite kicks are good for chomping on?

Yoshi loved my shoe laces. He sometimes chewed on the plastic coverings on the tips and would often pounce if he saw me tying them or if they came untied and trailed behind me on the ground.

As for why a cat would chew on your shoes, well, Quandt hasn’t ever actually encountered one that does that, though he concedes that it is possible. “It could be that they are responding to the texture or the taste,” he says. “Leather is animal skin, so that can be appealing. No one has ever hired me to work on shoe-chewing, but cats do get pica, which is the eating of non-nutritive substances like plastic. In some cases, pica can point to a certain nutritional deficiency, but I’ve never actually seen that myself. It can also be a psychological issue that may require medication like Prozac.”

Or maybe they just need more attention. Yoshi’s chewing behavior lessened significantly once I started using a wand toy to play with him on a regular basis. Again, cats don’t do things to annoy us. They do things we find annoying because they want something we’re not giving them, and they don’t know how else to connect with us. Yoshi was desperate for enrichment, and once I started giving it to him, he chilled out about my laces. 

If your cat's shoe fixation is driving you bonkers, Quandt has a couple suggestions: 1. Put your shoes where your cat can’t access them. Lock them up if you have to. Or 2. Set their favorite pair of shoes aside as an offering and just let them have at them. Give the shoes one more good, sweaty wear and then hand them over to your cat forever.

Once they have a pair they love and can always play with, sniff, and sleep across, they may leave your other shoes alone. And if they still insist on depositing kitty glitter (read: fur) on every shoe that enters the house, well, that seems like a very small price to pay for their love.