Cat Finds Its Way Home

A friend of my daughter has had to go overseas and before she left, two weeks ago, she found a new home for her beloved cat with another friend of theirs. The following day he was missing and his new owner couldn't find him anywhere.

Then his old owner emailed her to say that her former neighbour had written to say that her cat was back in his old home garden. This seemed impossible since it was a 10 k journey through a city and the cat had not seen where he was going. He had been transported by car inside a cat carrier covered over with a towel!. But it was true.

He was found in the garden of his old home looking a bit thinner and rather scruffy! After eating about a lb of food he settled down for a good sleep. Hopefully he will stay put now.

I wondered how they find their way home and found this online info:

Cats can judge within three inches the location of a sound being made one yard away. This is an essential skill for a predator that needs to catch a mouse hiding in tall grass.

Cats rank high up on the intelligence scale, and one of their greatest assets is memory. Studies at the University of Michigan and the American Museum of Natural History show that cats can remember problem-solving strategies for as long as 16 hours.

The phenomenon of cats finding their owners in a place where they have never been before is scientifically known as Psi-trailing. Many well-documented stories tell of cats that have walked hundreds, even thousands of miles to find their owners.

Cats seem to have an instinctive ability to find their way home; tests have shown that they use the earth’s magnetic fields to navigate.