Cat-in-a-box............

Cats are like young children...........place a box on the floor and you find one of them in it pretty soon! I have no idea why but I have a picture of me in a box when I was young, a picture of one of my sons in a box when he was young, and a picture of one of my cats in a box, so it is a true statement, I promise you.
Yesterday I watched in amusement as Ripley set about, with great determination, to get into a box. The sun lounge was warm in the winter sunlight, and she obviously wanted to laze about comfortably, so she headed for a small box tucked in by the side of a chest of drawers. This box had some plastic packing material inside so she painstakingly snagged it with her claws and yanked it out, squeezed herself in the box and snoozed noisily within minutes. Well, the box was important so I lifted her out, placed the packing material back in, and replaced the box. I had barely turned my back when she was at it again, snagging the packing material and yanking it out....and settling in the box. This little scenario happened four times before I did the sensible thing and hid the box. Poor cat! She did settle on a cushion in the end.
Funny enough Peanut never seems to have done this and seems quite content to suddenly crash on a sofa or bed. It's probably because she is so small and we would trod on her if she was asleep in the middle of the floor (and I think we have, in the past, to be honest).  Maybe she hasn't climbed into a box because the other cats always beat her to it? Jonesy and Ripley would always end up asleep in the most awkward of places....like the middle of a stair, or the middle of the kitchen floor, or on the computer keyboard. As for boxes? Leave one lying around and usually Jonesy was first to leap in. If he wasn't first, he was still soon in the box, due either to the fact he had landed on one of the others because he didn't know they were actually already in the box......or he did know they were in the box, wanted to get in the box, and wanted them out of the box!! This was generally accompanied by lots of hissing and spitting and yowling by the ousted cat, but being boss cat had advantages sometimes.
Having one cat inside a box, and one cat outside a box, made for entertainment of another kind. One cat would attack the edge of the box. The cat on the other side of the cardboard would dive for that place. Scrabbling and shredding and banging, and all sorts of growls, would sound the alarm that this game would all end in tears. Sure enough, one cat would get far too boisterous and the other one would end up having a hissy spitting fit and stalk off. Amusing for humans to watch, and annoying when the fur was flying around as you had to clear it up!
Give a cat......or a child for that matter....the choice between an empty box and some carefully chosen expensive toys, guess which would be picked? Oh yes, the box wins every time. By the way, the same goes for empty washing baskets!