To find out more about feline sleep peculiarities, Bored Panda reached out to Mikel Delgado, a postdoctoral fellow in animal behavior at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Mikel told us that as predators, cats tend to “work hard, sleep hard.”

But their sleeping patterns are quite different than ours. “Cats tend to sleep for short periods throughout the day and night, unlike humans, who tend to sleep in one long (hopefully!) bout.” In total, felines sleep 12 to 16 hours a day, and all that sleep helps them to “conserve energy for when they need it most—to hunt.”

Mikel also explained that most cats sleep a lot during the day since their humans aren’t at home and their environment isn’t active enough to keep them stimulated. “Providing your cat with a window perch, food puzzles, enrichment like cat grass, and safe solo play toys can help keep them more active when you are gone.”

It turns out, cats may be sleeping in all these weird places due to the fact that they fall asleep much more easily than we do. Plus, “they are also more flexible so they can fit into spaces that do not look comfortable to us.”

Mikel explained that some of those spaces may “provide cats with a sense of safety, or the ability to see what is going on in their environment.” Because even though we focus on cats as predators, they are also prey animals, so they need to be aware of what's going on around them.