Humping bed?

[Chatanuga]

For a while, my older cat Casey Jones has from time to time taken time out from his usual activities to stand on his cat bed and begin kneading it with all four feet while purring away.

Not too long ago, I noticed one of the seams on the edge of the bed's cushion was starting to come apart. I took the cushion out of the bed until last night when I was able to stitch the seam. I put the cushion back in the bed, and as usual when he would knead the bed, Casey pulled the cushion out of the bed to stand on it.

That's when I noticed that he was doing more than kneading the cushion. He was slowly humping it, totally oblivious to everything around him. Granted, since he was fixed when he was about 3 1/2 months old (is now almost 4 1/2 years old), he was only humping it and nothing else, but this has now been repeating since he got the cushion back for the bed.

Is this normal behavior for a fixed cat?

[Karen]

It's not terribly abnormal, but if it bothers you, you could try distracting him when he does it, by offering a toy or something.

[Catty1]

If he has taken to it lately, although as Karen said it is not terribly abnormal, you might call your vet's office just to check. Perhaps he has a slight UTI or something.

[Chatanuga]

After I originally posted about this, I did a Google search and saw that this kind of thing happens quite a bit. A friend of mine at work said that his cat for a while used to hump the floor of his house.

As far as something like a UTI goes, I looked the symptoms up last night, and there are no symptoms of something like that. He is regularly using the litterboxes (sharing them both with Smokey) with no increase/decrease in usage, difficulty in going, or blood or anything in his urine or stool.

Last night, I came home from work, and he began kneading the cushion with no humping, so I'm thinking he's just getting a bit of overly pleasured or something at times with it. It's no problem for me. I was just surprised that he was doing it since he was fixed. If he begins to do it regularly, I'll just put the cushion away for when my family visits with my 5-year old nephew since I don't want to explain to him what Casey is doing to the cushion.

[Catty1]

Any offspring from that would be very interesting. Cushion-shaped Tribbles, perhaps?

Glad he seems healthy, anyway.