Abstract
Domestic cats are popular pets globally, with many individuals being allowed to roam outdoors. Free-ranging and feral cats cause environmental losses due to their predatory behavior and the transmission of diseases. The factors affecting the intentions of owners to release and abandon their cats are poorly studied and speculative. Therefore, we surveyed children who owned cats in the Czech Republic to determine awareness and compare the attitudes to abandon their cats (with no intention of letting them back in ever again), which can be reflected later in children’s lives. Complete questionnaire responses were received from 2,923 pupils, including 976 cat owners. In children who could become adult owners of cats later in their lives, the origin of pet cats was significantly identified as an important internal factor, which may energize or direct the intentions to release outdoors or abandon unwanted and previously adopted stray cats. Since approximately 71% of respondents kept other pets, it is recommended to further study if the owner who is motivated to release an unwanted cat outdoors may also abandon other unwanted pet animals and the role of household practices and family norms regarding pet ownership. The presented findings should be of concern to wildlife managers, conservationists, teachers, decision-makers and other stakeholders to raise public awareness and political leverage to minimize the deliberate release of pet cats by their owners.
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We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions when evaluating our paper.
Funding
JP was supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic as part of the project DivLand (SS02030018). BP and KJ were supported by project No. UJEP-SGS-2025-43-004-2.
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The authors declare no competing interests.
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Name of the approval body: Ethics Committee of Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. Based on submitted questionnaire Ethics Committee of CZU declares that research does not infringe Ethical Code of Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. Ethics Committee found no contradictory against principles of ethics in the questionnaire and approved the ethical dimension of the research with mention of updating informed consent. The study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval ID: 01/2023. Date of approval: January 26, 2023. The Ethics Committee considered the ethical dimension of the research.
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The informed consent was present in the cover letter of the questionnaire, all respondents were fully informed that their anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be utilized (as confidential data), that there are no risks to them of participating, and that the results of the research will be published in summary form and no short citations will be attributable to individual respondents.
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Patoka, J., Frynta, D., Patoková, B. et al. Children’s attitudes to release outdoors and abandon pet cats.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-59461-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-59461-3
Keywords
Felis catus
- Pet trade
- Responsibility
- Invasive animal
- Environmental risk
- Abandonment
- Pupils
Source: Ecology - nature.com
