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

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.