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If you’re the happy owner of a cat, then you have definitely wondered what your fluffy feline friend gets up to all day when they leave the house.

The truth is, they’re likely exercising their wild side to a much larger degree than you ever imagined.

GPS devices attached to pet cats in Cape Town show that they enjoy walking huge distances, spend a lot of time in Table Mountain National Park, and go on killing sprees before coming home purring, all sweetly manicured.

The study found that our local kitties walk up to 18 kilometres a day, per News24, but mostly when the sun is out:

The range of cats in summer averages 3ha – the size of more than four soccer fields – but in winter it shrinks to less than 1ha. This is almost certainly because of the wet, cold winter weather in Cape Town, say scientists who previously reported that pet cats in the Mother City kill about 27.5 million animals annually.

That’s right, each of the city’s 300 000 or so pet cats kills between 59 and 123 animals a year.

This whopping number of casualties puts a “massive toll” on the Table Mountain ecosystem, and the researchers say this means there should be a 600-metre buffer zone on Cape Town’s urban edges:

They say homeowners should be banned from having cats within this zone unless the pets are restricted to purpose-built outdoor patios, known as “catios”.

“Keeping cats indoors, particularly in summer, limiting their roaming with catios and adding bells and bright ruffs on collars can also reduce predation on native prey,” they say in peer-reviewed journal Animals.

“Urban” cats are typically those living in homes surrounded by houses and roads which are all at least 150 meters from natural areas. Meanwhile,  “urban edge” pets can see, hear and easily access the national park and tend to roam 588 metres from home:

“Given that cats exact a massive toll on native animals, mitigation measures to protect biodiversity in protected areas are essential,” say the six scientists.

Robert Simmons from the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), Justin O’Riain from UCT’s Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa, and Colleen Seymour from the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s Kirstenbosch Research Centre were all involved in the study, using miniature 22-gram devices attached to cat collars in a soft leather pouch.

In an earlier study, the team had also used 32g KittyCams, which proved that 90% of cats’ hunting takes place at night and less than 20% of prey is taken home:

“In other words, it’s not surprising that most cat owners have no idea of the impact that their animals have on wildlife,” says Simmons.

You likely have a cat because you care about animals, so this might be shocking news.

Time to put all the bells and whistles on your killer kitty.

[source:news24]