Coronavirus pandemic might encourage cat owners to spend more time with their cats

This morning I was listening to the radio. A woman who had three children said that she had grown closer to her children during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. Before the lockdown she admitted that everything was done in a rush. She would get the kids to school after having rushed breakfast. In the evening there was more rush. She did not recognise that she was failing to give herself quality time with her children. She was trying to fit parenting her children around her work and was as far as I can tell run off her feet.

We can thank the coronavirus pandemic for more of this. Photo: public domain.

Working at home during the pandemic and having more time with herchildren flicked a switch in her brain. She realised that she needed to spend more quality time with her kids and work out a better work-family balance. She did not want the years to go by without enjoying spending time with her children.

This got me thinking. The exact same conclusion might be drawn with respect to cat companions. During lockdown, in the UK, many millions of employees are being furloughed and therefore receiving 80% of their pay. They have had a lot more time with their cats.

I've not heard any reports about this online but it must have happened. If it didn't then cat owners have failed to take advantage of a great opportunity to give their cat the interactions with them that their cats deserve. I'm convinced that in many households domestic cats are left alone too much. People can't be blamed because they have to go to work. They rush out of the house and when they come home they are perhaps too tired to want to play with their cat.

I hope that the lockdown has open the minds of cat owners - who in the past failed to be great cat owners because of work pressures - to the possibility that they can do better and try and find a better work-family balance. It is reported that many firms will be allowing their employees to work from home where suitable.

Certainly Facebook has accepted that about half of their workforce will, in the future, end up working from home. In addition, Twitter, as I understand it, is allowing almost all their workforce to stay at home to work. This will be a permanent arrangement. These are good examples of how employees of companies involved in digital media can take the advantages that the pandemic has offered to alter their lifestyles to the advantage of their domestic cat companions.