Abstract
This study investigates changes in the management of owned domestic cats (Felis catus) in a rural area of Denmark, at two points in time separated by 24 years. Households in a 47 km2 area, and on 23 farms near this area, were presented with the same questionnaire in 1998 and in 2022. Additional data about the number of cats earmarked/microchipped and registered in 1998 were provided by two cat registers. The study population was compared to other rural areas in Denmark using data collected in 2021 from a nationwide probability survey of cat owners. The study area was found to represent rural areas in Denmark well. From 1998 to 2022, our study found a slight drop in the total number of owned cats. There was a major shift away from cats living on farms; this was true both of full-scale farms (that is, farms from which the farmer makes a living) where the number of cats decreased by two-thirds between 1998 and 2022 compared to 1998; and on hobby farms, where the number halved over the period. However, the number of cats living in residential homes nearly doubled, and, correspondingly, there was also a significant increase in the proportion of cats with indoor access. Cat owners have increasingly adopted measures to manage their cats, including much higher proportions of cats being spayed and castrated (there was an increase from 61% to 98% among male cats with indoor access and from 13% to 70% among male cats without indoor access). There was, also, a major increase in cats that have been earmarked/microchipped and registered, rising from 8% to 64%. This change in owner behaviour has led to many fewer unwanted kittens being born and subsequently killed. The findings therefore provide evidence of changing rural human-cat relationships, with rural cat owners increasingly managing their cats in the same way as urban cat owners. Our findings also help to explain recent evidence that the number of unowned cats in Denmark is much lower than previously assumed.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Artikelnummer | e0316704 |
| Tidsskrift | PLoS ONE |
| Vol/bind | 20 |
| Udgave nummer | 2 |
| Antal sider | 13 |
| ISSN | 1932-6203 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2025 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:This study was supported by Animal Welfare Denmark and Aage V. Jensens Fonde in the form of grants awarded to MLU, by Kitty og Viggo Freisleben Jensens Fond by grants awarded to BW and UG, and by Skibsreder Per Henriksen, R. og Hustrus Fond by a grant awarded to PS. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We want to thank the respondents for their participation in the surveys on which this presentation is based. We also want to thank J\u00F8rgen S. Petersen and Per Hvenegaard for information on cat registration in 1998. Also we owe thanks to Eliza Ruiz Izaguirre for assistance in searching literature and to Nicoline Skandov for assisting UG and BW with the data collection in 2022. Finally, we want to thank two anonymous referees for extremely perceptive comments that helped to improve the quality of the paper in numerous ways.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 Sandøe et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.