As a cat parent, you often spend ample time looking for a new spot that your cat has made its safe haven. They tend to wander out and about out of curiosity more than canines do. As a result, pet parents end up losing sight and the cats their respective homes. As we are transcending into a technological era, there are new devices rolling out in the market to ease the pressures of pet parenthood.
The Cat Tracker initiative aims to trace pet cats. The tracker is a radio transmitter that can be fitted onto or around the feline’s collar. As part a of the testing phase, large numbers of cats in four different countries had the GPS trackers fitted onto them for a week. The inventors wanted to test the range and distance the trackers.
Post six years, the team from Cat Tracker published their findings in a journal by Animal Conservation. The results showed that the cats have a strong connection to their homes.
While speaking to National Geographic, Author of North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Roland Kays said, “I was surprised at how little these cats moved”. Scientific research has revealed that cats can put themselves in difficult situations with their own actions and inquisitive nature.
Amongst the case studies, one was about Katniss Everdeen, a one year old, long haired, blue eyed cat from Durham, North Carolina. Similar to the other case studies, she mainly stayed around her home. Aside from a couple of rounds around the apartment complexes on both sides of her homes. The GPS tracker found that she was mostly roaming about four acres from her home. While other cats stayed within 2.5 acres range.
Through this project, the Cat Tracker team realized that the data collected through the GPS system has been extremely useful in understanding cats and the kind of places they meander about. In the countries the team conducted the experiment, the outcome was that more than three quarters of the cats were found in the backyards of their homes most of the time.
