Why do cats always take a long time to walk through doorways?

They are on alert to danger that can be hidden in a new room.

But sometimes they stretch before walking through. That would put them at a disadvantage.

Because they are fickle and changable creatures, and like keeping you on the edge of sanity. Okay, probably more a behavior thing like @RedDeerGuy1 says.

They are not dumb as a doorway represents a truly vulnerable position to be in to be attacked from the front or from behind as they pass through the doorway and they are merely exercising caution as they cross that threshold.

Walk through a doorway? When my cats want outside, they’ll beg and beg. So when I finally get up to let them out, they sit right in the middle of the doorway. Half inside, half outside. Content to just let me hold the door open, for as loooooong as it takes. Half the time, they’ll change their mind about five minutes later and just come right back in. :[

@DrasticDreamer thanks for the correction. too late for me to edit.

Time is relative. For a cat, they may be proceeding at full speed; they have no concern for your temporal perception. You are to wait on them, not for them to act at your behest.

I think it also depends upon the cat. My little Kitten Mitten (RIP) was such a hyper little thing that the moment a doorway was opened, she had to be the first one to rush right on through; EVEN if it was a CLOSET door.

I can’t remember how many times this happened over and over every time I went to get something out of a closet. You think she might have gotten tired of rushing madly into closets, but nope. Every single time.

And getting out of my apt. was always a chore since she’d be right at my feet waiting to rush through the door. And since the only direction then to go was up, I had to follow her up several flights of stairs to bring her back home.

It finally dawned on me that she was quicker than I enough times to be annoying. So every time I left I would pick her up before going out, turn around and toss her back into the living room and shut the door before she could run back.

I guess she might not have lasted too long against predators out in the wild jungle with that lack of caution, but she was a friendly inquisitive little soul who immediately loved everyone she met.

She was really one of the most unique cats I ever had. Definitely different :)

Not all cats do. I think when they do, they’re hoping you’ll get bored and leave the door open. Cats prefer doors open.

Because they drink milk from ajar?

I’ve always seen it as a desire to maximize available options. Doors limit options. From the cat’s perspective, they impose a binary condition: if it’s on this side, it can’t be on the other side. Having a maximum number of options available is a desirable situation both from a safety point of view and from an opportunity point of view. It’s at that moment when the door is open and the cat isn’t committed to one or the other side that its options are greatest.

I think this is why cats become obsessive about anything their owners make off-limits to the cat. They then want nothing more than to push back against that limitation because it represents an impingement on its options.

Cats are always on the wrong side of the door. By opening it and allowing them to pass through you put them in an awkward position of being on both AND neither side of the door at the same time thus wreaking havoc upon their psyche.

Demand that your cat get a full time job.

This will force it to appreciate the precious commodity that is time.

My 2 lazy pussies are still snoozing away in my unmade bed at 9:04 a.m. here on the west coast. Soon I will drag them off the bed and put them out to sit on the deck and wake up so I can make my damn bed. haha
Then, they will sit and stare through the sliding glass door in the master bedroom looking all pathetic that their 18 hour nap has been interrupted but sooner or later they will wander off to do some lizard and bird watching and meander around for a few hours before nap time beckons again.

@Coloma A friend has a cat he calls “Ted Bundy”. Ted is always leaving him body parts from his various lizard, bird and rodent “watches”. Usually just the head but sometimes legs, wings, beaks, tails.

@rojo Haha..oh yeah, for years I called the cat door the lizard door, the gopher door, the mousie door. I always have at least one tail-less lizard running around in the house. Catch and release for later hunting fun in the middle of the night. Once, in the dead of night I woke up and went out to my kitchen for a drink of water and spied, in the dark the outline of something in the middle of the room.

I thought it was a missing cat toy I hadn’t been able to find and thought to myself ” Oooh, there’s that stuffed gopher toy!” I bent down to pick it up and it was real, dead Gopher, super fat and hefty with weeds sticking out of it’s cheek pockets. Gah..
I pitched it off the front deck and covered my ears and ran back inside so I didn’t have the hear the thud of it hitting the ground. haha

This is not a problem when the doors are open, is it? The cats I’ve lived with have been perfectly fine going through doors, unless the doors in question were help open for them to pass through.

Cats, in my opinion, tend to think of doors as obstacles. They don’t necessarily want to walk through, they just want them open so they can maximize their observation of the household/world. They have found out that their humans will invariably close them again, unless they take their time.

They are enjoying the ermmm…open-dooredness.

Not necessarily in a rush to get to the other side. Just enjoying that it’s now an option.

@longgone This is not a problem when the doors are open, is it?

No. It’s when we are entering or leaving a room with a closed door.

Because they can.

My cats will try to sneak out whenever the front door is open, but once they’re out, it’s like a begging session to get them back in the house unless it’s freezing out or raining. I always say “the cats want me to spend my life playing doorman.”