Fall nights get chilly around here. This time of year I usually only have one fire a day, mid-morning, so the temperature is slowly dropping inside from about noon on. It’s usually in the mid-50s indoors by the time morning rolls around.
I don’t mind, because I’m cozy in bed. And so is the old man cat Kimble. (Don’t laugh. I’m seriously thinking about buying him an electrically heated cat bed. Okay, you can laugh.)
But I thought the Cinna-Cave could use an upgrade. She may have spent all last winter living in someone’s unheated cement basement, but I feel like I could do better by her.
She is already sleeping on one of the two thermal mats. (They look a little weird, but they are cheap and work well.) The other one wasn’t being used, so I used yarn and a tapestry needle to stitch it to the shelf above the Cinna-Cave. It drapes down in back, creating a sort of pita pocket effect.
She has proven to be a very wary, fickle cat when it comes to this sort of thing. A legacy of her former life outdoors. Her paranoia is what kept her alive. She treasures the Cinna-Cave as one of the few places she feels 100% safe from surprises. (She does not like surprises.) I worried that putting a new thing in there would cause her to reject the whole thing.
At first, she sort of perched on the edge and glared at me. But the next time I glanced over, she had settled in. Here she is pretending not to notice that I am taking her picture.
In less successful news, this is a pair of not-quite-completed Vancouver Fog fingerless mitts in Cascade 220. I meant to dash them off as a quick gift. That was two weeks ago.
I have had to rip them back countless times. Partly my fault for amending the pattern, and partly my fault for being inattentive. But they are nearly finished, and only two weeks later than I thought…
My mom used to keep an electric blanket on the couch for our 23-yr old cat. Probably cheaper than a specialized warming cat bed, FWIW. I put my little guy in sweaters if it’s cold – thankfully, he tolerates clothing!
Hannibal and En Esch are now demanding an electrically heated cat bed for themselves. Never mind that we are in the process of getting a new furnace and the house will never be cold again, THEY WANT IT NOW.
The Vancouver Fog mitts are gorgeous, but the pattern is impossible to knit without screwing up. Ask me how I know…
No need to be ashamed of buying heated cat beds. I work at a pet store and once it drops below 60, people come in every day asking for them.
The mitts are beautiful! I made a pair last year in an orange heather color. They took forever. That was a really complex pattern for me.
My ancient dog has rejected every electrical heated pad or bed I’ve tried. However, he enjoys a hot water bottle and loves a flannel corn bag. They stay warm for hours under a blanket and are economical too.
I love the mitts! I’m cobbling together a pair of generic mitts for some tiny cold hands. No cables but velcro would be nice so he can’t get them off.
Have you thought of a heated mattress pad? We bought our first one for the tiny cold hand dude since he won’t stay under covers. Now everyone in the extended family has one. Except the dog. She has a poofy Costco dog bed that smells like cedar. So, she essentially smells like a big hamster.
I do not laugh! A few years ago I bought a heated bed for our aged feline. When your kitty goes from sleeping curled up into an impossibly small ball to conserve all heat, and instead sleeps sprawled out all “I OWN THIS” in their heated bed? You will feel like the best human ever.
Gwyndolyn had a heating pad to sleep on for the last six years of her life. I stored her lactated Ringer’s solution under it, so her daily dose was ~95F — not body temp for a kitty, but MUCH better than the 63F we keep our house.
TOTALLY worth it.
Now, of course, my honey says Eleanor and Melvin need the warm spot set up … I say, let the young’uns be cold: they’ll cuddle us more!
I love those mitts! I want to add them to my queue, but the darn queue keeps growing. I need more hands!
I cannot get the cats to sleep in places I make for them. They are the bosses and they get to pick where they sleep, thank you very much!
I’ll join the long list of your readers who think a heated cat bed is perfectly reasonable. After all I have a dog who has his own blankie that he sleeps under. I have to hold it up so that he can curl up under it when he goes to bed. In his defence he has very short hair and I do turn the thermostat down at night.
If I start buying heated cat beds it could get expensive – I’ve got six of them. Perhaps one for the old cat I’m fostering he’s such a sweetheart.
So many really adorable kitty stories – thank you all!
Hez has a heated blanket. Me. I wonder if I put one in her cat tree, if she’d sleep there? I wonder what it’s like to be able to move at night…..
Cute mitts! I knit Stulpen, reworked the thumbs and finally lost one when tge ends were all woven in.
Curse that lost Stulpen! I don’t know where mine went – I did like that pattern, although it sorely tested my cabling abilities at the time.
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