Always One Level Up: Why Cats Sit on Walls

Anyone who lives with a cat knows the routine. The patio door is open a crack and she is gone. Two minutes later she is sitting on the garden wall, the fence post or the carport roof, looking down at you as if that lookout had always been hers.

Footage like this piles up on its own. Nobody sets up a tripod and waits for it. You step outside, you look up, and there she is. Always one level higher than wherever you happen to be standing.

That cats like high places is hardly a discovery. It is something every owner works out in the first week. From up there you can see more, you are out of reach of dogs and small children, and the sun hits a wall long before it reaches the grass below.

The real spectacle is the climb anyway. Some cats go up in one clean movement, no warning at all. Others need three attempts, then sit down, act as though that was the plan from the start, and give one shoulder a very thorough wash. Few animals talk their way out of a botched movement with quite so much composure.

If you have cats in the garden, this taste for height is easy to indulge: a solid plank laid across the wall, a shelf by the window, a tree stump you simply leave standing. All that matters is that nothing wobbles and that the cat can climb back down again instead of having to jump. The rest takes care of itself.

Then you sit underneath with a coffee and get observed. Not looked at – observed. Anyone who has felt that knows exactly who is keeping whom in this household – and which of the two has the better seat.