If you follow my Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/HappyToms.Catsitting/

You will have seen a few pics I put up of Munch wearing a Santa hat… she was fundamentally unimpressed with the situation, and as such I thought I would explore the matter of dressing up your cat, the dos and don’ts and the impact it can have on your pet.

It certainly wasn’t a subject covered in my animal psychology qualification, but I think it’s worthwhile looking into the phenomenon of dressing up your pets and the possible impact it can have on your relationship with your furry chum.

Firstly, I do not condone dressing up animals in human styled attire for any length of time, especially if the animal is showing any signs of distress as a result… The photos I took of Munch, she was dressed very briefly and the second there was any sign of her being unhappy the offending article was removed…

But obviously Munch is a rescue cat that was basically feral when I rescued her… so I always knew her likelihood of enjoying this was very slim.

During my life of cat ownership, I’ve not known of many cats that will tolerate being dressed in any type of clothing for anything beyond a second or two.  The only exception to this was Sophie, my friend’s cat that they had had from a kitten and was very much their daughters’ cat.  She was such a soft and loving personality and the understanding between her and her owners such, that she would placidly allow herself to be dressed in teddy bear sized dresses and such, we would often see her wandering around the house with a dress or other such teddy clothing being worn with no objection…

BUT…

I would say she was the utter exception to the rule.

Vets explain this… “There may be some cats who tolerate wearing items of clothing, but they are very rare…”

“They would have had lots of positive experiences of being handled when they were very young, during what is referred as the ‘socialisation period’”

This was the case with Sophie, but Munch never had such positive reinforcement in her early years so it was always unlikely she would take to fancy dress.

From my research, any animal institution will not recommend dressing your cat in fancy dress or clothing, and there are several common-sense reasons for this. 
The first one being, they don’t need them, and they restrict the animal’s movement and ability to do what it wants to, and of course cats have their own fur coat that regulates their temperature… adding clothes affects their ability to do this as effectively.

If we take for example Munch’s Santa hat. If I had donned it upon her correctly it would have covered her head front to back and her ears… This is restricting the cat’s ability to sense its environment and the second she wanted to get up, she would be backing away and trying to remove from her head.  (cat’s ears are omnidirectional and used extensively for perception of their environment, how many times have you seen your cat rotate their ears backwards when hearing a sound behind them) so if that movement is restricted or impaired it can have a profound effect on your cat’s stability and movement and environment perception… same with their whiskers.

(Did you know that a cat’s whiskers are essential to their perception of spaces and gaps and whether they are capable of fitting though a gap or tight space?  They are also a good way of measuring how old/mature your cat is. The bigger the whiskers, the bigger/fatter the cat tends to be. Lol)