A review of the household escort service. Punctual, silent, impossible to dismiss.
The short answer: the bathroom is the one room where you are seated, stationary and available — a captive audience — inside the household's most fascinating chamber of taps, echoes and closable doors. Add ordinary feline attachment and door policy objections, and the escort service explains itself.
There are rooms your cat can take or leave. The bathroom is not one of them. The moment the door swings, a small shape slips through with the practised timing of a stagehand, takes up position on the bath mat, and begins the meeting. You did not call this meeting. Attendance, nonetheless, is mandatory.
The case for the escort, itemised
1. You are, at last, sitting still
For most of the day you are a moving target — upright, busy, distracted by rectangles. In the bathroom you are seated, at petting height, with both hands theoretically free. From a feline scheduling perspective, this is the only well-run appointment in your calendar.
2. The room itself is a wonder
Cool tiles in summer. A tap that sometimes produces the freshest water in the building. Echoes. A bath mat. The toilet-roll, spinning like prey. If the bathroom were listed on the cat's map, it would be marked “attractions, various.”
3. The door problem
Cats hold strong views on closed doors — a shut door deletes part of the territory and conceals whatever you're doing behind it, both intolerable. Following you in is partly pre-empting the outrage of being followed out.
4. Plain attachment
Cats keep loose tabs on their people — attachment research backs this up — and the bathroom trip is simply your escort doing the rounds. You're not being surveilled. You're being accompanied. There's a difference, and it's fond.
Vulnerability, briefly and honestly
A popular theory says cats guard us at our most vulnerable. It's charming, unproven, and probably backwards — more likely they feel comfortable being near you in a small, quiet, defensible room. Either way, the bath mat sentry stays.
If you'd rather bathe alone (bold)
Close the door before they notice the itinerary, and expect commentary from the hallway. A better trade: give the escort a station — a soft perch or small den near (not in) the bathroom — and a scratch on arrival. Most cats accept the compromise; the dens department can furnish the guard post.
Questions from the front desk
Why does my cat cry outside the bathroom door?
The door has severed the escort from the escorted, and this is being reported through the only channel available. Brief, theatrical, resolved on reunion — unless crying at doors is new and constant, which is worth a vet chat.
Why does my cat sit in the sink?
The sink is a cool porcelain hammock, cat-shaped by coincidence, with excellent walls. In summer it doubles as climate control. See also: the box economy — same physics, better plumbing.
Is my cat too clingy?
Escorting, supervising and general proximity are normal devotion. A cat who suddenly cannot be alone at all — yowling when you leave, following with visible distress, changed appetite — has moved from fond to worried, and that pattern deserves a vet's opinion.
The last word
Of all the rooms in the territory, they choose to attend the one where nothing interesting happens except you — which, from their side of the bath mat, was always the attraction.
→ Guard Posts & Dens
→ Read: Do Cats Actually Love Us?
→ Read: Surveillance, a Love Story
