When the Cat Is Home Alone

Working hours in Hong Kong run long — nine to seven, often later, is nothing unusual. Add small flats, and a lot of owners keep the cat indoors full time. The result is that a cat may spend ten hours or more a day on her own. That is the normal shape of keeping a cat here, not the exception.

The first thing to think about is water. One bowl in one place sounds reasonable, but for a cat alone all day, more than one source makes her more likely to drink — particularly if the home has more than one level, or if she keeps to a fixed territory within it. If the bowl is too far away she may simply not make the trip. Spreading them out needs no elaborate plan; one per level already makes a difference.

The second is vertical space. Floor area is tight to begin with, and there is not much of it to give over to furniture for a cat. But her sense of space is not only about floor area, it is about height — the top of a cupboard, the windowsill, the upper shelf of a bookcase, all places you do not otherwise use, are extra territory to her. In a flat with no floor space for a large cat tree, using the height usually does more than adding another piece of furniture at ground level.

“I come home and things are clawed and knocked about — is she getting back at me?” That is a question owners genuinely ask themselves. A cat left alone for long stretches without much to do will behave in ways that are easy to misread: shredding the sofa, tearing around at night, sweeping things off the table. Most of that is boredom, too little activity, nothing to watch — not revenge for coming home late or going out at all. Reading it as revenge is not only inaccurate, it points you at the wrong response: telling her off or punishing her, when she is already short of stimulation, only makes it worse.

There is a real difference between something that helps and something that merely occupies a space. A spot with a view of the street, with birds and insects and movement, keeps working for years. A toy that is novel on day one and never touched again becomes clutter quickly. A useful question when choosing: does this give her something that changes over time, something worth watching, smelling or scratching — or only a static shape?

We tried several of the wall-mounted cat shelves sold as needing no drilling. Some rely on heavy-duty double-sided tape, where the load rating is a claim rather than anything you can verify, and they began to work loose once a couple of heavier things went on them. The one still up at home uses pressure mounting — braced against a door frame or a corner rather than relying on adhesive. That distinction matters a great deal if you rent.

Beyond the objects, the shape of the day matters to a cat on her own. Feeding at consistent times, and somewhere quiet she can get to and hide, both help with how tense the hours alone feel. How much they help depends on her temperament and what she has been through before — installing one product does not guarantee anything — but it is a reasonable direction.

Renting is the norm in Hong Kong, and plenty of readers cannot drill, with some landlords stating in writing that no holes may be left in the walls. That should be said plainly: any vertical-furniture plan that requires drilling is simply not available to those readers, and choosing should start with drill-free designs that come down and travel with you.

This article is general background, not veterinary advice. If your cat shows anything that looks like a health problem, ask your vet rather than deciding from an article online.