Do you have a cat? You do? So, then you can surely recall all those times when you don’t have a clue where your cat has wandered off to. Because it’s  actually holed up in its favorite spot in the house, lying belly up or curled into a ball but, in any case, fast asleep. A lot of people find it odd that their cat spends so much time out like a light, but the truth is that we love sleeping. We are true sleepyheads.

This isn’t the first time somebody’s called us loafers and lazybones, but you can’t put the blame on us, because it’s actually a trait ingrained into our very nature. So, watch your manners and come along with me, and I’ll show you why we cats sleep so much.

It all starts early on, you see, when we’re newborns and still adorable little baby kittens. We kittens need nearly 20 hours of sleep a day. Twenty hours! No, it’s not that we are weaklings from the time we’re little, it’s just our way of economizing on energy. So, we lay back and take a snooze while our mama takes care of making our food to feed us.

Later on, when we are big guys, things change a little and we start drifting off into dreamland for about 12 to 15 hours a day. Well, maybe it does seem like we sleep a lot, right?

Okay, but it’s for the same reason as when we were little bitty kitties. Our inherited genetics tell us that we have to always be resting and saving our energy whenever we aren’t hunting or parenting our offspring. This biological programming makes us spend nearly 70% of our time sleeping.

In wintertime, we are even fonder of sleeping, because the temperature drops and we curl up to keep ourselves nice and toasty warm, to hold in that warmth and save energy and to keep ourselves better nourished. In summertime, we’re a bit more active.

Anyhow, life isn’t always a bowl of cherries. Sometimes, we drop off to sleep out of sheer boredom. So, get your “good owner” act together and buy or make us some little toys, because we get bored to death and our eyelids drop shut on us.