Since there is so little information on cat homing behavior, I started a research survey in 2013. These are the survey results as of July 2018. If your cat has ever displayed homing behavior, please consider taking this very short survey. To take the survey, click here.Homing DefinitionSome lost cats are able […]
Cat Home Range or Territory
8 posts
Many people with a lost pet think that a search dog is the best method for finding their pet. However, most people tend to have unrealistic expectations and a lack of understanding of how a search dog works. I previously wrote an article on considerations for Using a Search Dog, and in […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
While the behavior of lost cats is likely to differ from that of outdoor-access or free-ranging (stray, feral or farm) cats, we can still learn something from studying their normal movement patterns. In this post, I want to focus on research studies that measured how far cats normally traveled within […]
Before covering additional topics on cat behavior, I wanted to take a moment to review cat research in general. Although the cat is the most popular pet in the US, there is surprisingly little research on its natural behavior. So far I have only been able to find five research […]
A cat’s home range is the area that the cat normally uses in its daily activities. A home range is different from a territory in that it may not be defended from other cats, but non-biologists frequently use the terms interchangeably. When an outdoor-access cat goes missing, it probably means […]
