Meeting Abstract
The Domestic cat (Felis catus) is one of the most common pets kept in the UK and worldwide. In an increasingly urbanised world it is of importance to understand how the lack of green space and increase in density of conspecifics affects the ranging and activity patters of domestic cats. To understand this we studied cats from three different environments: rural farm, village and inner city. Each cat was fitted with custom-made high accuracy, high rate GPS-IMU collars and monitored for 4 separate 24-hour periods. There was a difference in the overall activity between the areas with the Farm cats being most active and City cats being the least active, Farm cats also showed a more nocturnal pattern of activity whereas City and village cats were more diurnal. Home range size and distance travelled per day varied in the three environments with farm cats having much larger ranges than village and city, and village having larger ranges than city. The distance travelled per day was shorter in the City cats, however Village and Farm cat travelled similar distances despite differences in range area.
