[OtinG]

There was a British documentary a few years ago where researches went to a small town in SE England that had a lot of pet cats. They managed to get approval from many of the residents to put GPS tracking devices on about 50 indoor/outdoor cats, and video cams on a few of them. Then they tracked their movements for several months. The findings were pretty interesting and some were even surprising. Most of the residents who owned cats let them come and go as they pleased. Each cat had his/her own territory they traversed, but most shared the same territory with other cats. Somehow they figured out a schedule so that they rarely traveled their territory when other cats were therein, and they tended to stick to a daily time schedule presumably to avoid contact with the others who used that territory. Females had smaller territories than males. Many of the cats new the schedules of the other cats and would wait until the other cat(s) were out and about then would go to their homes, enter the cat doors, and eat their food. That was actually pretty common! Kind of a "keep your eyes on your fries" thing I guess. I know my cats believe what is theirs is theirs and what is yours is theirs too! The cats that ventured into wooded areas rarely hunted. They would check out birds and mice, but very rarely hunted them much less killed them. Most of the domesticated cats seemed to have lost their hunting skills, or at least showed little to no interest in hunting. Other research has also shown that despite complaints that domesticated cats ravage the ecosystem through hunting, they rarely hunt and kill. Feral kitties would be different of course as they have no choice.