How Do Domestic Cats Spend Their Time?

How do domestic cats spend their time? It depends on whether they are indoor only cats or indoor/outdoor cats and where they live. Age is also a factor as is the gender of the cat. These are obvious points. For instance a domestic cat living indoors and outdoors in the Australian outback will have a different lifestyle to a cat living in my neighbourhood which is built up in the UK.

However there will be general patterns for all domestic cats and there will be large variations I think between individual cats. My cat is quite active and likes exploring while some individuals will be ‘homers’ and snoozers. This may particularly apply to full-time indoor cats where the home is not ‘catified’ to use the language of Jackson Galaxy. Cats ‘compensate’ for nothing to do by doing nothing! They snooze. I don’t like to see this.

I’ll describe what my cat spends his time doing and compare with the findings of a study carried out in 2009 in which cameras were placed on cats. Looking at the information I don’t find it that credible to be perfectly honest. Some of the information makes sense but parts of it do not.

In this study cats spent their time as follows:

• Grooming 50% of the time (this looks wrong to me)
• Cat television – looking out of the window 21.6%
• In the sink! I think we can call this resting somewhere with side supports like a box 1.7%
• Sleeping 6.1% (I bet that surprised a lot of people. On the internet website repeat parrot fashion that cats sleep for endless hours. This is incorrect. They will snooze and rest but this not sleep).
• Hanging out with other animals (if they are available) 11.8% or does this include humans?
• Eating and drinking 4%
• Looking at a computer 6.1% (this is very odd and can’t be right. Yes, some cats look at the television or computer and play sometimes with computer games but this is not universal)
• Playing with toys 5%

How Do Domestic Cats Spend Their Time? – My Cat

My ‘active’ cat spends his time as follows (note: he is currently a fully fledged indoor/outdoor cat because he escaped the garden enclosure which is meant to be escape proof).

• Exploring the outside and hunting 40% (this takes place almost exclusively at dawn, dust and in the middle of the night. His bedtime is from late morning to the evening).
• Sleeping and snoozing on my lap, legs, sofa, cat condo etc. 30% (cats snooze a lot but are not genuinely sleeping)
• Looking out of the window 7%
• Eating 3%
• Interacting with me 8% (my cat hardly plays with toys. This is partly because he is at present an outdoor/indoor cat and does not need artificial stimulation by playing with toys. He has real life toys: e.g. mice)
• Grooming 9%
• Sitting and looking in the garden 3%

Note: I am working on how to keep my cat in the garden enclosure. He is a particularly dynamic cat much like a high filial Bengal cat. He is slowing down but at about 4.5-years-of-age is still active.

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