[CAT] "Researchers track the secret lives of feral and free-roaming house cats"

[rfmcdonald]

Found via 3 Quarks Daily, I was interested to discover a report analyzing the territories and movements of outside cats. Radio transmitters are always helpful.

Researchers (and some cat-owners) wanted to know: What do feral and free-roaming house cats do when they're out of sight? A two-year study offers a first look at the daily lives of these feline paupers and princes, whose territories overlap on the urban, suburban, rural and agricultural edges of many towns.

[. . .]

The study used radio telemetry and a sophisticated activity-tracking device to capture the haunts and habits of dozens of owned and un-owned cats living at the southern edge of Champaign and Urbana, neighboring cities in Central Illinois. Together, the 42 adult cats originally radio-tracked for the study ranged over a territory of 2,544 hectares (6,286 acres).

[. . .]

As expected, in most cases the un-owned cats had larger territories than the pet cats and were more active throughout the year. But the size of some of the feral cats' home ranges surprised even the researchers.

One of the feral cats, a mixed breed male, had a home range of 547 hectares (1,351 acres), the largest range of those tracked.

Like most of the feral cats, this lone ranger was seen in both urban and rural sites, from residential and campus lawns to agricultural fields, forests and a restored prairie.

[. . .]

The owned cats had significantly smaller territories and tended to stay close to home. The mean home range for pet cats in the study was less than two hectares (4.9 acres).

"Still, some of the cat owners were very surprised to learn that their cats were going that far," Horn said. "That's a lot of backyards."

The outside cats faced serious health issues, and caused serious environmental issues, too.

In an earlier study, co-author Richard Warner, an emeritus professor of natural resources and environmental sciences at Illinois, followed the cats of about two-dozen rural residences over several years.

"Two of the leading causes of cat deaths in that study were other cats and disease," Warner said. "And both of these leading causes of death are sitting here waiting for these owned cats outdoors."

Cats also get diseases from wildlife or other cats, Mateus-Pinilla said, and can bring them home and infect their owners and other pets.

"For example, Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite spread primarily by cats, may cause neurological, reproductive and even respiratory problems in humans, cats and wildlife, depending on the species affected," she said. Rabies, cat scratch fever, feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus are also of concern to pet owners whose cats encounter other cats outdoors, she said. Vaccination of pet cats will reduce but not eliminate the threat of disease transmission, she said.

Even though pet cats have relatively small ranges and are active only in short bursts, Warner said, their impact on wildlife in the immediate vicinity of their homes is likely much more intense than that of a feral cat that wanders over a larger territory.

Unlike other feline predators, such as bobcats, that are native to the Midwest, domestic cats are invasive species that have a disproportionately damaging effect on wildlife – either through predation or disease, Horn said.

Wild animals that have adapted to ecosystems that are already fragmented, such as the prairies of Central Illinois, are even more endangered because domestic cats are disrupting the ecosystem by hunting, competing with native predators or spreading disease, he said.