Happy Cat Month: Our Favourite Ways of Keeping Cats Happy

September is Happy Cat Month, and honestly, it might be our favourite thing in the pet calendar. Keeping cats happy is not about spending a fortune on gadgets or turning your living room into a soft play centre. It is about understanding what your cat actually wants from their day, then giving them a bit more of it. Cats are brilliant at hiding boredom and stress, which means a lot of us assume everything is fine when our cat could really do with more to think about.

So, in honour of Happy Cat Month, here is what we have learned from looking after thousands of cats across the UK.

Keeping Cats Happy Starts With How Your Cat Sees the World

Cats are both predator and prey, which explains an awful lot about their behaviour. They want to hunt, and they want somewhere safe to retreat to. Give them both and you are most of the way there.

That is why the cat who ignores an expensive electronic toy will happily chase a shoelace for twenty minutes. The shoelace moves unpredictably. It can be caught. It behaves, in your cat’s mind, like something small and edible.

Play in Short, Frequent Bursts

Cats do not hunt for an hour at a time. They hunt in short, intense bursts, several times a day. Two or three five minute play sessions will do far more for your cat than one long one, and they fit into a normal evening much more easily.

Wand toys are the gold standard. Let your cat catch the toy at the end of the session, because a hunt that never ends in a catch is frustrating rather than satisfying. Then feed them. Hunt, catch, eat, groom, sleep is the natural sequence, and following it tends to produce a very contented cat.

Give Them Height

A cat who can get up high can survey their territory, and that makes them feel secure. Vertical space is one of the cheapest and most effective ways of keeping cats happy at home, particularly in a smaller flat.

Good options include:

• Wall shelves at staggered heights
• The top of a wardrobe, cleared and made comfortable
• A cat tree near a window
• A cleared windowsill with a view of the garden

Keeping Cats Happy at Mealtimes: Feeding Should Take Effort

A bowl of food that appears twice a day takes about ninety seconds to deal with, which leaves a lot of empty hours. Puzzle feeders, treat balls and food scattered in a few different places around the house all make mealtimes last longer and give your cat something to solve.

You do not need to buy anything. An egg box with biscuits in the cups, or a cardboard tube with the ends folded over, works perfectly well and gets recycled afterwards.

The Boring Essentials That Matter Most

Some of the biggest wins in keeping cats happy are unglamorous.

Cats want:

• Their litter tray well away from their food
• One tray per cat, plus a spare, in a multi cat house
• Scratching posts tall enough to stretch fully upright on
• Enough separate resources that they never have to queue or negotiate

Cats Protection has a genuinely useful guide to caring for indoor cats if you want to go deeper on this, and their advice on cats and play is well worth ten minutes of your time.

Keeping Cats Happy When You Are Not There

This is where a lot of owners come unstuck. Cats are famously independent, and there is a persistent myth that you can leave a cat alone for a few days with a big bowl of food and they will be perfectly content. They will not. Cats are deeply attached to their territory and their routine, and a stale house with nobody in it is unsettling for them.

Our cat sitting service exists precisely for this. A sitter comes to your home, so your cat stays in their own territory with their own smells and their own sleeping spots. They get fresh food, a clean tray, a bit of company and a proper play session, and you get a message to say all is well.

If you have a mix of animals at home, our pet sitting service covers the whole household in one visit.

Small Changes, Big Difference

You do not need to overhaul everything this month. Pick one thing. Add a shelf. Swap one meal into a puzzle feeder. Do five minutes of wand play before bed. Keeping cats happy is a habit rather than a project, and cats are very good at telling you when you have got it right.

We Love Pets Is Here to Help With Keeping Cats Happy

If you would like a hand looking after your cat, whether that is regular visits or cover for a week away, find your local We Love Pets branch and have a chat with the team. Every one of them is a cat person, which helps enormously.

And if you love animals enough to want to do this for a living, our pet care franchise might be worth a look.

Happy Cat Month from everyone at We Love Pets!