How to Keep Cats Warm in Winter

Do the free things first: find the drafts, get the bed off a cold floor and away from glass, and put it where the cat already sits. Those three changes do most of the work. Then, if you want to add heat, a 4 W thermostatic pod costs about $2.11 for a whole 120-day winter at the ceiling, which makes it one of the cheapest kindnesses in this catalog.

What a cat is actually doing all winter

A healthy adult cat in a heated house is not in danger. It is running a continuous search for the warmest surface available, which is why cats end up on radiators, laptops, laundry and the one patch of carpet the afternoon sun reaches. The Ohio State Indoor Pet Initiative treats resting places as a basic indoor need rather than a luxury, and in winter the quality of a resting place is mostly about temperature.

So the job is not to warm the cat. It is to make sure that when the cat goes looking, the warmest option is somewhere you are happy for it to be.

The free half, in order

1. Do a floor-level draft check. Walk the room on your hands with the heating off and feel along skirting boards, under doors, at the bottom of window frames and around cat flaps. Cold air moves along the floor, which is exactly where the cat sleeps. A rolled towel under a door costs nothing.
2. Get the bed off the cold floor. Tile, concrete, laminate over an unheated void: all of them pull heat out of a sleeping cat continuously. The same bed on a chair or a shelf in the same room is warmer without any heater.
3. Move it away from the glass. A single-glazed window radiates cold all night. The window seat that was the best spot in September is one of the worst in January — which is why cats relocate in autumn and people assume the bed has stopped working.
4. Put it where the cat already is. A warm bed in the spare room loses to a cold sofa in the room with the people. Our placement logic applies to beds too.
5. Then, and only then, add heat. Once the bed is in the right place, a heater makes it the best spot in the house. In the wrong place it makes it the warmest unused object in the house.

What adding heat costs

Two things to insist on if you buy a heated bed. It should be thermostatic and warm toward a cat’s own body temperature rather than getting hot — a cat will not move off something too warm the way a person would. And it must carry a real safety listing: the K&H units publish MET Labs certification and state they exceed US and Canadian electrical standards. An unlisted heated pet bed is a thing to put down.

Heated, insulated or neither

The picks, and who each is for

The K&H Thermo-Lookout Pod is the pick if you are adding heat, and it is the version of that purchase we would make: 22 inches round, a 4 W thermostatically controlled heater that is removable so the pod works unheated in summer, MET Labs certified beyond US and Canadian standards, with a removable machine-washable cushion. Covered, so it holds the warmth it makes. For: elderly, thin or arthritic cats, cold rooms, and anyone who wants the bed to be warm before the cat gets in. Skip it if: there is no outlet where the bed should go — and K&H does not publish an interior height, so a very large cat is a guess.

The MEOWFIA felt cave is the pick when there is no power where the cat sleeps, and wool is genuinely the right material for the job rather than a styling choice — it insulates while staying breathable, so the cave does not turn clammy. 100 percent merino wool felt, handmade, with the large size published at 19 inches wide and 12 high with an 8 inch entrance and guidance up to 20 lb. Nothing to plug in and nothing to run. For: cats that like to be enclosed, rooms with no outlet, households that would rather not add a cord. Skip it if: your cat is large — an 8 inch entrance is a squeeze at 20 lb — or you need to machine wash it, because wool will not.

The Best Friends by Sheri donut is the pick for a cat that curls tight and does not want a roof over it. The raised rim is the warmth mechanism: a curled cat against a wall of stuffing loses heat from less of its surface. Four published sizes from 18 to 36 inches, fully machine washable, no power. For: curl-up sleepers, open rooms, households that want to wash the whole thing weekly. Skip it if: the cat sleeps stretched out, or it is stiff and elderly — Sheri publishes no rim height, and a rim is a step. Our senior bed page ranks on exactly that.

The change that is not about bedding

The rest of the season

Our heated cat beds page does the running-cost arithmetic across the powered options, self-warming beds covers the no-cord route, and cat caves ranks enclosed beds. If there are cats outside as well as in, helping outdoor cats in winter is a different and harder problem.