A newly adopted cat arrives with a geography nobody knows yet. The shelter can tell you how she behaved in a kennel, but her sleeping and hiding map in your home will be drawn by her, room by room, over her first days and weeks, and your job is simply to notice and write it down before the details blur. That map matters more than it sounds, because knowing where a cat hides is how you find her in an emergency, how you judge whether she is settling or struggling, and how a future sitter avoids tearing a house apart looking for a cat who is asleep in her usual place.
Watching Her Claim the House, Room by Room
Start the list on her first day with the one room she begins in, and let it grow at her pace rather than yours. Record her usual sleeping and hiding spots, room by room, any new favorites, and the places she must never be shut into, including cupboards and the garage, updating the entry for a room when she gains access to it and chooses her places there. Early entries will be mostly hiding: under the bed, behind the sofa, inside the wardrobe if a door is left ajar. Later entries usually show a shift toward sleeping in the open, on a windowsill, a chair, the end of your bed, and that shift is one of the clearest signs that a new cat is beginning to trust her home. Date the entries, because a list that shows her range expanding week by week is a settling record as much as a finding aid, and it will steady you on the days when progress feels slow.
The Places She Must Never Be Shut Into
The safety half of the list deserves the same care as the comfort half, and a new home is full of shut-in risks an established household has stopped noticing. Cupboards that close softly, a garage she can slip into behind a car, a washing machine left open between loads, a loft hatch, a reclining chair mechanism: walk the house as a cat, looking for enclosed spaces that invite exploration and then close behind her. Write each one on the list as a place she must never be shut into, and pair the writing with a household habit, doors checked before they are closed, the garage checked before the car leaves, so the list changes behavior rather than merely recording fear. As she settles and her range grows, repeat that walk, because a confident cat reaches rooms and cupboards that a frightened cat never approached in her first week.
Reading Hiding as Information, Not Just Location
Once the list exists, it starts to tell you things beyond where she is. Hiding in her usual spots at her usual hours is rest, while hiding somewhere new, for longer than usual, or in a place she has never chosen before can be the first sign that something is wrong with her or with the house. Note her patterns as they emerge, which spot she picks when visitors arrive, where she goes during thunder, where she sleeps when she wants company without contact, because those patterns turn a location list into an early warning system written in her own choices. Share the finished list with anyone who will care for her, and keep it beside her other records rather than in a separate note that will be forgotten by the next holiday. Kept current within Pet Passport, the packet KinsLe holds together for her records, the map of her house is ready the first time a sitter ever needs to find her.