The secretive nature of cats makes it nearly impossible to observe their natural behavior when outdoors. Likewise, few cat owners know where their cats travel or what they do when allowed outside. A new study conducted in Britain used GPS loggers to map the travel of outdoor-access house cats. What makes this study more innovative …
New Insights into Cat Behavior Using a GPS Logger and Cat-cam Read More »
So many of the people who contacted me this summer were convinced that their lost cat had been killed by coyotes. This is a pervasive belief that unfortunately causes many people to lose hope and stop searching for their lost cat after a short period of time. Unless you are able to find his/her remains, …
Understanding Coyote Behavior in Urban/Suburban Areas and Assessing Risk to Cats Read More »
I was excited to recently learn about a new research study on the behavior of free-roaming feral and pet cats. Here is a link to a summary of their findings from the Illinois News Bureau. The full research article is available free for download at The Journal of Wildlife Management website. I will also be …
Many cat owners believe that a lost cat will find its way home. Lord (2008) conducted a survey of households in Ohio and found that 62% of cat owners believed that if their cat strayed from home they would be able to find their way home on their own. Only 21% of cat owners disagreed …
I was surprised to recently learn that as many as 30% of people acquire their cats because they were found as strays or abandoned or “just showed up” (New et al. 2004) This does not include cats adopted from shelters, which accounted for another 13% of cats acquired, or those adopted from rescue groups, friends …
Adoption of Stray Cats and the Importance of Lost Pet Posters Read More »
Trail cameras (also called wildlife, game, scouting, motion-sensitive, surveillance or remote cameras) can be highly effective tools for helping locate and recover displaced cats (including escaped indoor-only cats) and skittish lost dogs. They can help provide evidence that the lost pet is in the area and whether s/he will enter a humane trap if one …
Online Resources for Selecting and Using a Trail Camera Read More »
Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are a common cause of injury and death for outdoor-access cats. Olsen and Allen (2001) found that 51% of outdoor-access cats that suddenly and unexpectedly died were the result of RTAs, and Rochlitz et al. (2001) found that RTAs were the forth most common cause of death for cats after old …
Factors that May Predispose Cats to Road Traffic Accidents Read More »
When an outdoor-access cat goes missing from its home range, this frequently means that something has happened to the cat to prevent it from returning home. Death, injury or illness may all prevent a cat from returning home. When sick or injured, a cat may hide within its home range and may die if not …
The Cooke County, Illinois, Coyote Project provides some interesting research on observations of coyote attacks on dogs in the Chicago metropolitan area. Using a search of newspaper databases from 1990-2004, they found 70 articles of coyote attacks on dogs. The average number of attacks per year increased from 0-2/yr in 1990 up to 6-14/yr in …
Many lost cats will react in fear when they are approached by any person including their owner. This well documented behavior is frequently confusing and even heart-breaking to the lost cat’s owner who cannot understand why their cat would act this way. I think that former pet detective Donna Holsten described this phenomenon best when …
Owners’ of lost cats are frequently concerned with whether their cat might be hiding or lost somewhere in the woods. This is a valid concern since 1) the probability of detection may be very low in the woods depending on the density and type of vegetation; 2) there may be many miles of woods surrounding …
Habitat Use of Suburban Cats: do they travel in the woods? Read More »
Most studies of urban/suburban coyotes have found that coyotes in these areas relied predominantly on natural food sources rather than human generated food such as trash, domestic animals, pet food, and domestic fruit (Gerht and Riley 2010; Morey et al. 2007). The most common food items were leporids (rabbits) and rodents and occasionally deer or …
