200 domestic cats in Guyana. Why?

There were just 200 cats in Guyana in 20071. Guyana is not a small country. It is 83,000 square miles in size. The UK is 94,000 square miles. There were almost 7 million domestic cats in the UK in 2007.  The difference is stark, weird and it makes me think, why?  Venezuela, Guyana’s neighbour had almost 2.5 million cats at 2007. Venezuela is 354,000 square miles; a country that is 4.3 times the size of Guyana but the cat population is 12,500 times greater!

Guyana is on the north coast of South America as is Venezuela:


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There is nothing on the internet that explains what I have to call an anomaly. There are several possible reasons (are there others?):

  1. The cat population figures are wrong (unlikely)
  2. Gyanese kill domestic cats (highly unlikely)
  3. Guyanese don’t like domestic cats. This seems to be the reason. For Guyana it is one cat per about 3,000 people. For the UK it is one cat per 9 people.
  4. Guyanese much prefer dogs. There are puppy mills in Guyana and there are stray dogs all over streets and often hit by cars2.
  5. The human population of Guyana is very low for its land mass. I haven’t checked this out.

Ref: (1) World Society for the Protection of Animals. (2) stabroeknews.com (an online Guyanese newspaper).

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3 thoughts on “200 domestic cats in Guyana. Why?”

  1. How strange! But it looks to me as if they don’t like pet animals much at all in Guyana if they have puppy mills and lots of stray dogs, because they obviously don’t treat dogs properly either.

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  2. I think its because they don’t like cats Michael. I’m also not sure about the basis of their culture however its also possible that they have a deep founded suspicion of the cat and its motives so therefore it has no place in their lives.

    If this is a very poor country and they have little money to invest in any sort of animal it would have to be a creature of use and not something they would have to feed yet get nothing useful back in return at least a dog could be deployed to guard their possessions.

    I have done no homework Michael so may be way off; these are just my thoughts so please feel free to correct me 🙂

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