If you’ve ever owned a pet, you’ve probably made the same well-intentioned purchase:

A comfortable, well-designed pet bed.

Soft. Supportive. Perfectly placed.

And completely ignored.

Because pets, as it turns out, have their own very specific ideas about where they should sleep.

Take Neyland and Toku, for example.

Out of every available option in the house — couches, chairs, rugs, and actual pet beds — they both landed on the same choice:

My office inbox tray.

Now, keep in mind, they were with me in different eras. But one constant similarity grounded them. They routinely chose to sleep in a hard, small, waffled metal tray designed to hold papers.

Not exactly a Tempur-Pedic. Not even what you’d remotely expect to be a top-tier sleeping destination.

And yet, one after the other, they claimed it.

Curled up inside like it was custom-built for them.

Comfortable. Relaxed. Completely at ease.

Watching them, you start to realize something:

Pets don’t choose sleeping spots based on what we think makes sense.

They choose based on:

• proximity to their human
• a sense of security
• habit and routine
• and sometimes… absolutely no logical reason at all

There’s something oddly perfect about it.

You can spend money trying to create the “ideal” environment…

…and they’ll still choose a cardboard box, a pile of laundry, or, in this case, an inbox tray.

It’s part of what makes our pets both so entertaining and special enigmas.

And maybe that’s the real takeaway:

It’s not about the bed. It's not even about comfort. 

It’s about where they feel comfortable — even if that place makes absolutely no sense to us.

Now, Molly? Molly came along around the same time that Neyland did. She was older (17 when the picture above was taken) and perhaps...at least in terms of human logic...wiser because she chose to sleep NEXT to the inbox. Toku? Neyland? IN the INBOX!

So now I don’t question it.

If the inbox tray is the chosen spot, then the inbox tray it is.

I’ve just learned to find another landing spot for my paperwork.