Cats have a lot of housekeeping to do. It seems that every time you look at them, they’re cleaning.  Cats clean themselves after they eat, before they sleep and after you touch them. Cats will clean themselves after they eat because they want to remove the scent of food from their bodies.  In the wild, cats are small enough to become prey for a larger animal. They want to remove the scent of food because they don’t want another animal to think that they are a tasty treat!  They also clean themselves while in their cat bed before they go to sleep. They feel that they are safer from larger predators if they remove the scent of anything that they’ve eaten or, touched before they sleep. They also want to remove any scent of where they’ve been recently  It’s sort of like after we were  in a hot crowded room, we want to remove all of those strange scents from our bodies.

Cats also like to clean themselves because they like to be petted. Cleaning themselves is like the feeling they get when someone pets them.