This week, a mom named Sophie awoke to an oddly warm house. The night before, she’d set the thermostat to a reasonable 68 degrees Fahrenheit, but after walking downstairs, she saw it was now set to a balmy 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I thought one of my kids
changed the temperature setting,” Sophie told The Dodo. “I sent a text in our family’s group chat asking who changed the thermostat. And no one confessed. I dropped it.”
But not everyone seemed to mind the extra heat (and likely increase in the utility bill). The family’s three cats, Max, Lily and Todd, seemed perfectly content with it.
Sophie turned the heat back down and continued on with her day, allowing the unknown temperature change to remain a mystery. However, it wasn’t long before the house got even hotter than before.
“Later on, my husband told me that the thermostat was set to 88,” Sophie said. “He immediately thought that our thermostat had malfunctioned. He changed the setting back to where we normally keep it.”
Turns out, it wasn’t just a glitch.
“A little while later, [my husband] saw the cats climb up onto the ledge by the thermostat,” Sophie said. “He saw them physically change the temperature with their little paws.”
First, Max was caught trying to turn the heat up again.
Then Lily followed suit.
“Max is known to be mischievous, [but] Lily is usually the voice of reason,” Sophie said, having learned that the former’s influence may be rubbing off on the latter.
Oddly, although the thermostat has been there since the family moved in, the cats had never tried to mess with it before. But now it's their favorite toy.
“I don’t know if Max and Lily realized what they were doing, but my other cat, Todd, enjoys sitting on the heat vent. So maybe he somehow summoned them to change the temperature setting,” Sophie said.
Whatever the case may be, Max and Lily had given themselves away.
And fortunately, there was an easy way to prevent future cat-induced overheating.
“We have since put a password lock on the thermostat so they can’t change it anymore,” Sophie said.
Despite feeling a bit hot because of her pets, Sophie and her family wouldn’t change a thing about them.
“I love my cats. They are such a blessing to us. They give us love and keep us calm during busy, stressful days,” Sophie said. “I’ll take the hijinks all day, as long as my fur babies are happy and content.”
