I have no real historical basis for this, but I am willing to bet even dating back to Egyptian times when cats were worshipped they were also in baskets.  There is just something irresistible about a cat in a basket; both to the person watching and to the cat who is occupying it.  At some point every day, our cat Blue here is either resting on top of the clean, warm towels or he is using it as a type of fort to hide in when it is empty.  He tumps it over and proceeds to attack anything — human, animal, or man-made, that happens by.  This has resulted in the arduous and much dreaded trimming of the cat claws for the sake of both furniture and feet.  I may have already mentioned this, but when I was little our Seal Point Siamese named Suki used to run straight up the curtains.  It was so cool to watch and even funnier to hear my mother holler at her to “GET DOWN!” which, of course, she blithely ignored until she was good and ready.  She also liked to climb under Mama’s baby grand piano and “play.”  It looked like a ghost piano with its black and white keys moving up and down seemingly of their own accord, producing wildly dissonant sounds.  Blue has not had a chance to explore that as we have an upright piano.  However he has “played” a time or two sitting with his haunches on the bench and putting his front paws on the keys.  There’s another irresistible sight — a kitten on the keys.  We never quite know where we will find Mr. Blue.  Burk calls him “Kung Fu Master Blue” because of his proclivity for popping out from the most incongruous places.  It reminds me of the silly Pink Panther movies where Clouseau has a Chinese manservant named Cato Fong who is trained to attack him regularly in order to keep him alert and skilled in martial arts.  Cato puts a lot of effort into taking his employer by surprise, just as I suspect Blue does with us.  Clouseau never really feels safe, as Cato will stop at nothing.  Having a Siamese in the house carries much the same sentiment.  The American political satirist and journalist P.J. O’Rourke once quipped, “Never wear anything that panics the cat.”  I think we all shall follow this sage advice as we remain ever vigilant for a cat in a basket.