Why does my cat drag towels around the house and howl?

I have no clue why she’s doing it, but maybe if you wash the towel and put it away, she’ll stop. One of mine gets in the bathroom trash, picks up some toilet paper in her mouth, stops and drops it every so often and “cries”. We think she wants to play, as she fetches if you throw balled up paper for her. She also seems to lose us when we go to bed. She’ll wander around crying until I call her into the bedroom.

Cats are bizarre creatures. You can try putting her towel in her favorite sleeping spot, or put it on your bed if she sleeps with you. Roll her up in the towel and carry her around in it. Drag the towel in front on her and see if she chases it. Give her a pet and love session while she is laying on or near the towel. Does the towel smell like her, or where she used to be?

My first cat was very sick when we adopted her, and she slept on a heating pad for the first week we had her. Ever since then she loves to lay on the heating pad, whether it’s on or off. It’s been 7 years.

I reiterate, cats are bizarre creatures.

Tiny, that is sooo cute! I wish I had a kitty now…

What’s her name?

I had a cat once.

She was delicious.

Since I can’t see the behavior, I don’t know if this applies or not. (Is the howl, like a gutteral growl?) But I do know that some cats will act this way with things (toys, pieces of blanket, sock, just about anything) as a kick back to their ‘hunter instinct’. She may view the towel as her prey/kill and thus lays claim to it. She drags it around and the ‘howl’ is a warning to other cats (even if there aren’t other cats) to stay away this is her towel and they can’t have it. Or it may just be another in a long list of cat behaviors that can’t be explained. I love cats! (@jack, as pets, not as food, just to be clear)

marissa, that was the most adorable explanation possible. I hope that’s what this is. It sounds more like crying than growling, but she’s a Persian and she makes really weird noises. @hoosier, my cat’s name is Estelle, after the late Estelle Getty. (Here‘s a picture)

I don’t think that she’d want to sleep on it, since I put it in her room (she gets the guest room to herself), and she just dragged it across the house, kneaded on it, cried, and repeated.

She didn’t do it last night, so I hope that the problem is solved. She is so loud.

What a cute kitty…though she looks pissed off!

It almost sounds like a false pregnancy. Some animals will fixate on a specific item and treat them as if they are offspring (nesting, cuddling, etc). A few animals will even begin to lactate.

tonedef – one of my girls does that with socks, she hunts them, yowls (she has a definitely different voice when she does this), then she’ll proudly drop in at my feet, and at night when I’m in bed, on my face!!! As Marissa said, it is a throw-back reaction. She is hunting our socks, just like yours is hunting your towel. Think of it as her mouse. We often say to our girl, where’s your mouse and she’ll give us her quizzical look and then come running back with a sock.

Another story: One day, out of nowhere, shoes started showing up on my friends front porch. One at a time, each morning, a shoe would show up. Sometimes, there would even be a matching pair. One night, we were coming back to his house late from dinner, and we saw his cat, Mary Jane, carrying a shoe in her mouth. The next morning my friend went around the neighborhood to see if he could find where she was getting the shoes from. He walked up to this house, and saw a bunch of shoes sitting outside of the front door. Turns out a Japanese family lived there, and they kept their shoes outside. Well, my friend gave them back their shoes and recommended they keep their shoes in the house. But the family did not want to. Instead, every time a shoe went missing, the family would just get their shoe(s) from my friends front porch.

Hey…what does the vet say??? ask them if you haven’t…hopefully they have some insight.

My cat does the same thing! It is usually clothes, though. I caught him on video a couple of minutes ago. I think it is seperation anxiety.

I have a male cat that drags a blanket around the house at night. As soon as we go to bed, the dragging and yowling begin. It looks to me like he is humping the blanket. I can’t tell for sure but after he is done dragging it and yowling, he always licks himself. Also, if anyone walks into the room while he is doing it, he stops immediately. He won’t do it if he is being watched. I think it is pretty gross. Since I am not a cat, I’m not really sure what is going on.

@kimmdavis. Wow! I didn’t know this was such a common phenom. I wonder how to make my cat stop doing it. It sucks when I have to clean up towels and dirty clothes every morning. And she’s LOUD!!

I had a cat, “Boo” was his name. He was the most talented cat I have ever had. He would fetch the tops of aeresol deodorant cans. He not only fetched them, but would instigate the game by bringing them to me when I was sitting on the floor. After he fetched he would shake hands. So cool. Another thing Boo would do would be to bring blankets up from the basement. He was a muscular cat, but it was an awesome task. He’d tow them upstairs but if a human touched it, it would be dead, and he wouldn’t knead it. He would then go back down the basement and get another one to knead. Sometimes he would bring up a sleeping bag! I wish I had had a video camera back then. He left us 5 years ago at the age of 13.

Seriously! My 9 year old male cat just started doing this a year or so ago. It’s usually at night (after 10pm) and he grabs a towel, nothing special about the towel, and drags it around the house, usually out of sight, and HOWLS. It’s like a mournful yowl. For the life of me I can’t tell if it’s a paternal thing, a sexual thing (he was neutered at 5 mos), or something to do with his lost kittenhood. Usually it’s a hand towel, but sometimes it’s a bath towel! It’s so obnoxious!

My cat has turned this into an extreme sport. I think he now tries to see how heavy of a blanket he can drag. More than once, I have found my snuggie in the middle of the hallway with teeth marks on it.

My cat is also older (12), and neutered. He’ll drag anything soft- dirty clothes, towels, blankets. If you try to interrupt him, he makes really angry noises.

My cat howls every night carrying beanie babies around the house. He likes to put one in my bed and one in front of all the doors. I have another cat who is deathly afraid of them.

@fluffysmom This is the single cutest cat story I’ve ever heard. I love all of these mysterious, puzzling cat stories, because it really shows how complex little cats can be. I have a friend who closes her cat in the office with all his toys every night, and he opens the door (he jumps and pulls down the lever-style handle), then opens the bedroom door, and takes all of his toys, one at a time, to her bed, and sleeps there with her and with all of his toys.

Also, with your cat, @fluffysmom, there seems to be a sense of fastidiousness, just like with my friend’s cat. One beanie baby in front of each door. That is just so cute.

my cat also does the same, but she brings up bra’s and sox! mostly when i am not around… and she does meow while draging the cloths in her mouth kind of like she is crying. i guess they are just asking for more attention or more affection.! she does listen when i call her or if i cry she is there to confort me! so i should be there for her…~!!~

My cat does the same thing with the kitchen towels and howls only at night. Sometimes i will wake up and i will find three different towels on my bedroom floor, which means she brings one up, drops it and then goes downstairs and repeats it two more times. It is really bizzare behavior. Sometimes, i have the towels in the wash room and she will get them out of there. I do my best to hide them or make sure they are put away, but she will start to collect my childrens socks and even my husband’s underwear one time and bring them in my room and leave them on my floor. She wakes the baby almost every night and stops howling only when i shush her or she jumps on the bed. She is a very needy cat meaning that she loves to be pet, but will not leave you alone no matter how long you pet her. I sometimes have to push her away to make her leave me alone.

The only thing i can think of is that she plays the same memory over and over again. She was the first kitten out of my cat Lady’s litter. When she was 5 months old, my cat lady was in labor with her second litter and was having them in my bedroom upstairs. After Lady had one of the kittens, She left it, walked downstairs and sought out my cat Sage, the then 5 month old, and dragged her upstairs by her neck and put her in the birthing box with her while she started to give birth to the remaining four kittens. Lady ended up getting hit by a car a few months later, but i think since she was the only kitten i kept out of all of the litters and she was really close to Lady (her mom), she misses her and replays it over and over again every night..the towel being her as a kitten.

Perhaps i am looking into this way too far, but it is the only thing i can think of and i don’t see it stopping anytime soon. ....and suggestions?

@blhvns I think that cats definitely do this for psychological reasons. I thought that maybe my cat was having tooth pains, and was “teething”, but I got all his bad teeth taken out and he still did it. I recently put him on Prozac for litterbox issues, and he doesn’t do it anymore. Maybe it is related to some kind of kitten-era trauma.

My two female cats love to snatch sour wash rags out of the laundry bin then roll all over them on the floor. They act intoxicated while they are doing this. I cannot imagine what sort of pleasure they derive from this but they obviously enjoy it. They also cry and yowl each night around 10pm. Sometimes while carrying their toys upstairs to the bedroom. After that they go to sleep until morning.

I have a neutered 3yo male cat who just began doing this with shoes, and my parents have a spayed female 11yo who has done it with beanie babies since they got her. Once when my cousin was staying with us, her wild, pained howling woke him up and scared him deeply; my parents have since warned every guest who stays overnight that they may hear a banshee at some point. We thought she must have lost a litter of kittens and was playing it out for psychological reasons, but since my little buddy began the behavior recently I think the explanation offered in this thread about it being a prey-guarding behavior makes more sense. My other cats don’t seem to be affected by his yelling at all, though, so maybe it is something else… Good to know that this is common!

I have a 6 year old male hymie that does the same thing! He doesnt care if it is towels, shoes or underwear! I get up in the morning and I have 5 different shoes in the floor by my bed. My cat will do this in the day time too.. We thought he was lonely..got another cat.. but no siree… still doing it!

Hey, has your cat ever been pregnant before? If so, it sounds to me like your cat is either missing her babies (if they were taken away) or wishes to have offspring. The towel would represent the kitten she would carry in her mouth, and her crying sound she makes while doing it, is her crying for the loss of her babies. Or it could also be her crying out of longing to have her own kittens.
The reason why I think she behaves like that is because my aunt once had a cat who had her kittens taken away. Even years after the fact, the cat would carry around small stuffed animals, dish clothes, etc. and she would be crying for the loss of her kittens while doing it.
Just a suggestion!

I have a fixed female. Day or night, she will carry a sock in her mouth and walk around and cry very loud. As soon as she sees me she drops it and make a funny chirping noise and walks away. I think it’s because she either was pregnant and had babies that were taken away or aborted. It seems like a maternal thing. The next time I’m at the vet, i’ll ask her and keep you updated

Fletcher, one of our two neutered, 5 year old male cats does this throughout the day. If we leave a laundry basket out we find socks, underwear, and hand towels all over the house. I found a trail of undies from the bedroom down the hall and into the living room tonight. He often howls while carrying these items around. He’s a healthy, good natured cat in all other ways. I’ve lived with cats for over fifty years and this is the first one who has ever done this. Obviously the “misses being pregnant” explanation doesn’t apply to Fletcher.

suki0101, I think it is a maternal thing. She is bringing you the prey that she “caught”.
I had a mother cat once who would go outside at night and hunt, then bring back what she had caught, usually a mouse, and drop it in front of her kittens. (sometimes it was still alive and she would demonstrate for them how to kill it) She would always make that chirping noise when she did this.
It sounds like she is following her natural instincts and you are the one she is taking care of.

FYI it’s definitely a female carrying her “kittens” and a male carrying “prey”. I have a female cat that carries those spongy play balls all around the house at night and comes to bed with one – mewing in exactly the same way mother cats mew/call their kittens – as she brings it to the bed. She also plops them into her dry food bowl. Apparently she’s a good mom and makes sure her kittens are fed. lol.

Hi tonedef! My little cat Roxy has recently begun doing the exact same howling (in an in-heat & calling type of voice) and dragging around things routine, but only since we’ve had her spayed a few months ago, curiously, and like blhvns, it wakes my baby up. She seems to prefer the little rugs in my new baby’s room, so I thought maybe it was a jealousy/give-me-attention thing, but then she started doing it with washcloths or small towels (and then my underwear, too, which really wierded me out!!). She is a really strange cat to begin with, though.
I sleep on my side. She sleeps either between my chin and shoulder or in the crook of my armpit, always half on me. When I take a bath, she gets up on the toilet seat next to the tub and gives herself one. When I have to pee, she gets into her litter box under the bathroom sink and pees. When I eat, she goes to her bowl and eats. She’s a very clingy, needy animal; she’s almost always within three or four feet of me (she’s asleep in my lap as I type this). My husband has told me that when I leave she sits at the front door and howls constantly until I return (which drives him nuts).
She was found as an 8 week old kitten in a parking lot so I think she has abandonment issues, but I have been totally perplexed about what exactly she’s doing with the howling/dragging thing. She’s never had kittens and has been an inddor cat for all but the very earliest time of her life. She is like a child to me and is much closer to me than any of my family or husband. She also demontsrated one night while I was asleep that she knows what breasts are for: I woke up to her trying to nurse on me!!! My husband almost fell off the bed laughing, but it sure felt pretty nasty to me! I take care to sleep with a sports bra on now.
I googled ‘cat behavior dragging towels’ and this page came up and I am glad to have read it. There are a lot of intelligent, plausible answers here and I thank those who have taken the time to post them and tonedef for asking this question!! :}
(By the way, I had a JackAdams once, and he tasted awful and stained the sheets.)
One thing I do wonder though, tonedef, is have you or any of you others ever had the following feline experience? When I yell for my husband or one of my kids, my cat starts meowing loudly or comes running if she isn’t right there. If I keep it up, she jumps up and nips my cheek; just a faint bite not meant to hurt, but I guess a “shut up!” type of thing. It really startled me! I’ve had plenty of cats before but none ever displayed this kind of behavior, or the dragging and howling, either, but then I was never this close to one emotionally before. Is this normal for a cat? Also, do any of you know what I mean by finding the ‘right’ animal for you, a once-in-a-lifetime complete understanding, just a clicking between you and a cat? My husband and friends don’t understand what I mean when I tell them that my cat is like my real soul mate.

The answer to this mysterious cat behaviour is both simple and complicated. It’s called ‘fabric softener.’ Now, before you think I’m as crazy as this cat behaviour appears to be, let me explain…

Sweaters, socks, towels, jumpers etc are washed in washing powder that contains an enzyme that has a similiar scent to the lactose in a female cats milk. This emzyne can be found in all brands of laundry powders and fabric softeners and is a derivative of wool called lanolin. Lanolin and lactose have similiar protiens and that is what attracts the cat. Strange but true.

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze (i.e., increase the rates of) chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process are called substrates, and the enzyme converts them into different molecules, called the products. In the heating process during laundry washing, the enzyme in the washing power converts and gives off a strong scent which the cat is attracted to.

Lactose is a sugar that is found most notably in milk. Lactose makes up around 2–8% of milk (by weight), although the amount varies among species and individuals. It is extracted from sweet or sour whey. The name comes from lacte, the Latin word for milk, plus the -ose ending used to name sugars.

The item of clothing, be it socks, towels, jumpers simply attract the cat due to the animals highly developed sense of smell. The ‘humping’ behaviour is more prevelant in male cats, as opposed to female cats… however, female cats who display this behaviour have a dominate male gene in their genetic makeup. The dragging and, humping and howling are dominance signs… and stranger still, the kneeding that sometimes accompanies this behaviour is called a ‘softening.’ The softening is the cats instinct to soften its prey (ie: the towel) before it’s gifted to fellow pride members.

The behaviour is perfectly normal and often occurs at night because cats are nocturnal and in the wild, would usually hunt at night.

I just got a cat and she drags my socks around and drops them in her water dish….almost every day! i was also wonder what it means???

I love how this thread stays alive—since 2008.

My cat carrys a stuffed animal around and makes a crying noise. he also plays with the animal like its another cat. i dont know why he does it. but i realy want to find out.

My cat’s been doing this with late at night with socks for years. He is a 15 year old neutered male, has been neutered since he was 2 months old, so I doubt this is a phantom pregnancy! The prey explanation makes a lot of sense to me…

My cats (male and female littermates, both fixed) carry their toys (mostly made of wool) between the bedroom and the living room every day. The male sometimes meows when doing this, but the female often finds a blanket to knead while purring and holding the toy in her mouth. She can do this for 10 minutes at a time!

My cat does this with his long feather toy. He only does it at night and cries with it in his mouth. I used to think it was because he wanted to play with it but when I would get close to him he would either cry more and try to walk away or he would just drop it and walk away from it. I’m so glad I read this because I felt bad that he was crying when I was trying to sleep.

I have 2 cats, both of them are adopted. One of them is a tabby and shes so weird. She goes into my room and drags my underwear, socks, shirts, heck I even have a pair of gortex military boots while I was in service and she would drag them around my house. She seems to really like my huge wool socks too (which would make sense cause I always wear them with my boots in any weather to absorb swet). Sometimes I would come home to see all my army and regular cloths all scattered around the house. Every 2 to 4am in the morning she would grab something and drag it to me when I would be home and howl about it. Then when I go up to her to pet her, that tail of hers goes wild as she waves it all over the place, sometimes she takes a swipe at me when I get close to her while she acts like that. Later she will go right back to sleep, and she doesn’t do this with other peoples clothing, just the stuff I have. Probably cause its all mixed with wool winter kit lol

My cat does this too. I have caught him standing on top of my dresser and hooking his paw on a sweater in the open drawer and letting it drop. He then goes about doing the drag and howl routine and leaves clothes all over the place. For my cat, I believe it is seperation anxiety as well.

My cat Bijou is 21 and has been playing with socks for about 8 years. We can’t figure it out either and just wake up in the middle of the night and say “oh yeah Bijou is having a sock party for one” and we think its a nesting instinct or maybe kitty alzhiemers. I think that she thinks the socks are kittens because she drags them around the house and then drops them and howls, its almost like a cry. She had 3 dead kittens right when I got her (she was pregnant and very young) and so I think that when she is alone, she grieves her kittens. She just took some out of the laundry basket and ran past me and 5 minutes later, the sock party began. I never thought to look it up on the internet. My bf has had 50 or so cats and he has never heard of anything like this. Oh also, I introduced a male cat to the house on 9–11-01 and that may have triggered some bizarre behavior. Bijou does not get along with Rocky. I enjoyed reading all of the posts… The Shoe one was the best story. I am glad that Bijou is a little thing. She can only carry rolled up socks! ^_^

My maine coon Sunshine does this with toys, and it is horribly loud. He is a huge cat (30 something pounds) and he has a howl to match. He typically runs with my brother’s super-splash ball, but once I caught him with my moms cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t try to eat it, thank God, but he did not want to let it go. Lol, it looked like he was trying to smoke it…..

@shayschloss that sound hilarious!
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