Cat Scared Of Heater

[Biologist Cat Lady]

Hey guys so my cat is a siamese who is about 3 years old. I have had him since he was 3 weeks old (bottle baby). He is the only cat in the home. I moved into my current apartment about a year ago.

I turned on the heater for the first time last night because the night before that it had been 59 degrees inside... Well when I turned on the heater my cat freaked out. He ran and hid under the bed. This was at about 9 last night. He is still hiding under my bed this morning even after the heat has been off for ages.

It's not even a very loud heater it's actually the quietest one I have had in the houses I have lived. He has never hidden from any other heaters in his life. Is this normal for cats? When should I be worried? Should i keep running it a night and just let him acclimate? Thanks for the help guys.

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

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B Biologist Cat Lady - Without knowing what sort of heater you have, one can't say. Cats' hearing differs a bit from Human hearing in that in general it doesn't extend quite as far down toward our perceived 'subsonic' level; their low range begins a few hz up the scale from our own. As such, to a cat, a "low hum" - which we simply allow our brain to ignore, adding it into the "white noise" background - can be the equivalent of a fourteen cycle note to Humans - just below the threshold of hearing, and with a tendency to set off the fear receptors. Lots of commercial air conditioning units - and especially rooftop units - tend toward a 20 to 30 cycle output - not low enough to be wholly subsonic to Humans and to set off that uneasy feeling one gets with >15 hz vibrations, but certainly subsonic to cats, and perhaps sufficiently "invisible" as to put the fear instinct in motion, and this might be the case with certain heaters as well. If you truly want to know the heater's ultrasonic sound output in hz and db (or micropascals), a quick call 'round to rent an Ultrasonic Sound Meter either commercially or from the local university Sciences department should yield a definitive answer.
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[orange&white]

Hopefully he'll acclimate to it within a few days. You certainly can't go without heat all winter. My kitten did a similar thing this summer the first time I turned on the ceiling fan in my bedroom. She was absolutely terrified for a day or two, but I left it running and she figured out that it wasn't going to cause her any harm.