This is:
My wife and I bought a new washing machine with a vertical load and immediately decided to test, load, turn on. The cat walked around the machine for a long time, but not finding the window sadly looked at us and offended left.

You are lucky that your cat has such a gentle character. My cat when lost the mirror in the hallway (I liked to look at it very much) made me such hysterics that I generally thought the exocyst would call. It was a little blood... I bought a new mirror and a tub underneath it... the first two weeks the cat only went away from it to eat and to the pot...