In my game I had to change this spell a little.  I did this as we had house ruled short rest as 10 min instead of the hour.  (all 5 players had a least 1 level in warlock for story reason, lol).  For this reason this spell was changed down to 1 min.  The funny thing it was used in combat during a war part where they where defending the castle wall.  It was more about hp recovery as they where still in full cover on tower battlements and that war was very long.

I actually have a situation I have designed in my campaign where taking catnap is super useful (granted, my original intent was not to design a situation for catnap to be useful). 

My party will be defending a town against waves of enemies. I have told them that, mechanically, between each wave I will have them roll a d100 to determine how many minutes they have before the next wave arrives. This time can be used to prepare, repair defenses/structures, or cast spells that could be helpful. It also means if they roll a 60+ the party will be able to get in a short rest between waves (so they are not guaranteed a short rest, but its likely they will get at least 1 or 2 over the course of the entire battle). It adds some variety and lets them never really know during a fight if they will be able to recover lost resources before the next one, so they have to weigh their odds before using it. 

The bard of the group decided to pick up catnap. Now, all the party has to do is ensure they roll a 10 or higher on the d100 to guarantee at least some of the members of the group can have a short rest between waves. 

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Quote from TheCubester >>

Yeah, but how often is something like that going to come up?

 Not sure what you mean?  You make it happen. Wall of Force + Catnap = full short rest in the middle of any combat.  You take it whenever you like. 

Or do you mean how often are you fighting something and your party is out of resources?  That’s kinda up to the DM but I see it all the time. 

 
I'm imagining the scene in The Phantom Menace when Darth Maul and Qui Gon end up trapped for a few minutes with the energy barrier between them.

Quote from EurobeatJester >>

Quote from Brewksy >>

Quote from TheCubester >>

Yeah, but how often is something like that going to come up?

 Not sure what you mean?  You make it happen. Wall of Force + Catnap = full short rest in the middle of any combat.  You take it whenever you like. 

Or do you mean how often are you fighting something and your party is out of resources?  That’s kinda up to the DM but I see it all the time. 

 
I'm imagining the scene in The Phantom Menace when Darth Maul and Qui Gon end up trapped for a few minutes with the energy barrier between them.

And I'm imaging a wizard failing the cast of Sleep over a Tabaxi NPC and then, a bard succesfully tried casting Catnap..... 

That's the point..... 2 spells doing almost the same thing.

Catnap works on Elves. Spells says "up to three willing creatures of your choice that you can see within range fall unconscious for the spell’s duration". They are not put to sleep.

Imagine your party is getting decimated. Bad. And your fighter/monk could really use a short rest. So could your warlock who blew through his spells already. The whole time the party has been clowning on the Ranger- but here he comes and saves the day by using his rope trick to open up a pocket dimension everyone can hide in for 30 minutes. But that’s not long enough to rest and help- here comes “catnap” to the rescue.

The benefits of Catnap (and Prayer of Healing as of 2024):

First, everyone can spend HD on healing.  Second...

• barbarians regain one use of rage
• bards regain all uses of bardic inspiration
• clerics regain one use of channel divinity
• druids regain one use of wild shape
• fighters regain one use of second wind and one use of action surge
• monks regain all focus points
• paladins regain one use of channel divinity
• rangers remove one level of exhaustion at higher levels
• rogues regain their use of stroke of luck at 20th level
• sorcerers regain sorcery points on one short rest per day
• warlocks regain all pact slots
• wizards can prepare 1 spell, and can restore spell slots on one short rest per day

Some subclasses such as the battle master, psi warrior, or soulknife also regain other resources on a short rest.

The point of the spell is to make it easy to grab the benefits of a short rest in much less time.  Prayer of healing does the same thing and is a lower level spell slot and adds bonus healing and affects more targets while catnap is not included in the 2024 ruleset.

Here's a decent use for it: Combat ends, before starting to cast the ritual to revive his pet familiar, the Wizard casts catnap on the Fighter, Warlock, and Monk. Soon as his familiar is revived, the party wakes up and is ready to bust some heads.

Casting catnap on party members while traveling when they wouldn’t normally be able to take a short rest is great.  Let your casters take a nap in the wagon.

It if allowed in 2024(this was a 2014 thread) helps short rest classes a bit when a normal short rest is hard to come by in your game, and some peoples tables its really hard. It allows rest casting with 1 hour duration spells like armor of agathys which I normally ignore unless I'm building around it. And combined with say prayer of healing and a 10th level genie locks ability that is 3 short rests in less time than it takes to get 1 normal short rest. Short rest classes would love that. Battle masters will get to spam maneuvers, warlocks sling spells with abandon, monks go crazy with ki etc. 

I would imagine it's perfect for a dungeon crawl where it's not very safe. 

Quote from Ogelthorpe >>

Casting catnap on party members while traveling when they wouldn’t normally be able to take a short rest is great.  Let your casters take a nap in the wagon.

I mean if you are traveling in a wagon you probably have an hour anyways.  But this did give me an idea for why skeleton might not be a bad option for a warlocks familiar. Have it drive your wagon while you sleep in the back. Sure a teammate can do it, but its nice when you are self sufficient about it. 

edit to add a skeleton chauffer is also pretty stylish. 

Catnap is actually very useful, its not even incredibly situational. I'll list a few things.

1. If the party runs from a fight, and then casts catnap, 10 minutes later they can return to the fight without the enemy being rested.
2. In gritty realism campaigns its a absolute necessity. In any campaign where the DM pays any attention to travel time, daytime, and time limits it is really good.
3. Abilities that need recharged often. (Warlock, magic item)
4. Another great ablity is spells that last a hour or longer, some good ones are Crown of Stars, Longstrider, and Armor of Agathys. Then you can take a Catnap and have those spell slots and the residual effects. This is really good if you find the right spells, and its even more useful for Warlocks.
5. Catnip is just a side option spell. Is it underpowed for its level? Sure but a Fireball is obviously going to be a lot cooler and more powerful.

Sorry for the block of text, I just threw this together with my previous knowledge. I like minmaxing characters and this spell has made It on the a couple.

Catnap allows Sorlocks to get 144 x your spell slot level Sorcery Points in 8 hours, rather than the usual 32 x spell slots.

Granted, it's not on the spell list for warlock, but 5 levels in sorcerer is worth it.