# Owned House Cats Show No Preference for Specific Land Cover Types When Roaming Outdoors

## TL;DR

House cats don't prefer specific outdoor environments when roaming, suggesting their impact on wildlife may be limited to areas near homes.

## Contribution

This study shows that cats do not select specific land cover types for roaming, challenging assumptions about their hunting behavior.

## Key findings

- Cats typically stay close to home and do not prefer specific habitats for roaming.
- Home range size increases with proximity to natural open areas but not due to land cover preference.
- No land cover type was over- or under-represented in cat home ranges compared to random expectations.

## Abstract

Pet cats that are allowed outdoors are known to hunt wildlife, but it remains unclear whether they prefer to roam in areas that offer more hunting opportunities. In this study, we fitted pet cats with GPS harnesses to track their movements around their homes. Using detailed, up-to-date land cover maps, we found that cats usually stayed very close to home and ranged only moderately farther when natural open areas were nearby. However, cats showed no preference for any particular habitat or land cover type. These findings suggest that the roaming behavior of pet cats is not primarily driven by a search for hunting grounds, but rather reflects general exploration of their environment. Therefore, buffer zones around human settlements may not need to be extensive to reduce the impact of pet cats on natural habitats, since cats are not expected to preferentially venture into these areas.

Owned house cats negatively affect wildlife when roaming outdoors, yet it remains unclear whether their movements are determined by selection for specific land cover types. We GPS-tracked 49 neutered, owned cats with daily outdoor access in a Mediterranean habitat, monitoring each for seven days. For each cat, we created a detailed, fine-scale land cover map from near-contemporaneous aerial imagery. We delineated each cat’s home range and compared its land cover composition to that of an equal-area circle centered on the median x and y coordinates of GPS fixes, representing directionally unbiased (isotropic) roaming. Home ranges were small (mean 0.85 ± 0.06 ha; median 0.73 ha; approximately 50 m radius), and cats whose ranges included nearby natural or semi-natural open areas had larger home ranges than cats in urban environments. Home range size was not affected by sex or season and decreased with age. Despite detailed, accurate mapping, no land cover class was found to be over- or under-represented within cat home ranges relative to the null expectation. These results, although limited to harness-tolerant cats, suggest that owned cats in our study area do not preferentially select specific land covers when roaming outdoors.