It was either a needlepoint pillow or neon sign that said it best: We have much to learn from animals—particularly where design is concerned. In their kingdom, coziness is as much about creature comforts as it is a timeless aesthetic.
Marvel at the duality of a tortoise’s mobile retreat: Can your mosaic-tiled backsplash protect you from a coyote and simultaneously outlive the next big kitchen trend? Or take the garden snail, whose wearable cabin keeps her lovely sluggy body safe while teaching us a lesson in visual restraint. Her living room: a cozy calcium carbonate spiral inspired by the Ionic volute. Mine: covered in pine needles and glitter (yes, still), all of its coziness dependent on a dying tree covered in lights.
A mother kangaroo, as I’m sure you know, keeps her joey away from danger by carrying him in her pouch. Hers is a primordial cradle of millennial pink skin that keeps Joey snuggled cozy and close. Of course, it is not merely a warm color palette that soothes our young aesthete’s soul; it is the physical and emotional sensation of warmth. At the Kangaroo Sanctuary in Alice Springs, Australia, where orphaned roos are rescued, rehabilitated, and eventually returned to the wild, pouches made out of pillowcases and group cuddles keep motherless joeys feeling cozy.
While we may not be able to craft our own human-size pouches (although we tried our hearts out, remember Snuggies?) we can always look to the enduring comfort and surprising addition of a hug-worthy stuffed animal. This suggestion is not entirely fueled by nostalgia, after all, if a joey at the Kangaroo Sanctuary can’t be put with others, the sanctuary will pair him with a stuffed animal. And Jill, the most famous squirrel on Instagram and prolific thought leader of the cozy movement, is often photographed clutching a tiny teddy bear who appears to be the size of a walnut. “I'd read an article about a bat rehabilitator using teddy bears as a comfort tool during baby season,” says Jill’s human mom, Stephanie. “Adults snuggle together for warmth in their dreys, or squirrel nests.” Inspired, I propped up a life-size stuffed cheetah named Margaret next to my desk and would hug her in times of emotional desperation.
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The only animal who understands and demands coziness more than a joey, squirrel, or a bat, of course, is a rabbit. They line the interior of their nests with rabbit fur. Can you imagine! Fur-related luxury notwithstanding, they have a few key needs in order to feel truly at ease.
“Rabbits are prey animals,” says Lindsay, human owner of the much-beloved and deeply-missed Flemish Giant named Cocoa Puff. “They like to be able to see their escape route."
Visible escape routes may not sound especially warm and fuzzy to our much smaller human ears, but being able to see "the out" is a crucial design element for humans to feel cozy, or at least comfortable. Back when offices were open, we kept our eye on the workday clock so we could pack it up at the appropriate hour. Now, of course, as so many of us have learned in quarantine, working and living in the same confined space makes it hard to see the end of the day, which makes us feel guilty for relaxing when we could be working and can cause sleep to overcome us when we’re supposed to be productive.
One solution to this very predicament is to craft dedicated spaces: an area where you work, and an area where you leisure. Minks, an IG-savvy adopted mini-rex rabbit, understands this better than most. During the day he is front and center in his home, but after hours, he retreats toward his dedicated resting area: a nest on the second shelf of a cat condo. I call this aspirational work-life balance, but his human mom, Katie, says it's instinctive. “In the wild, when a mother rabbit is going to have babies, she burrows in the ground and builds a comfortable nest for her family.”
Though I've yet to successfully decompartmentalize where I work and where I relax, I am proud to report that I write this from my own version of a nest: a couch in the middle of a home that I feel lucky to call my own (after I pay my landlord each month), cozied up next to a human and a dog, three squeaky chew toys, and two millennial pink makeshift kangaroo pouches around my feet, also known as socks.
