Many of us know that cat like boxes, and if you need convincing, find out about world-famous feline and Guinness Book of World Record holder Maru, the Japanese cat that cannot stay out of them.

Following a Dutch study entitled ‘Will a hiding box provide stress reduction for shelter cats?’, cats with boxes adapted to their new environment faster compared to a control group without boxes. In the end, cats with boxes were less stressed because they had a ‘cardboard hidey-hole’ to hunker down in.

“The close contact with the box’s interior, we believe, releases endorphins – nature’s own morphine-like substances – causing pleasure and reducing stress.” The cuteness factor surely helps the proliferation of Twitter’s hashtag #CatSquare showing tons of people who taped squares to their floors and snapped their cats sitting on them. Then again, a lot of cats did not, but to be fair, some of them looked comfortable sitting on other stuff like comfy chairs.

The obvious exception is the cat carrier because that means going to the vet or getting into a car. The latter we will leave to the dogs.

(Link: phys.org, Photo of Cat in a box by Hehaden, some rights reserved)