A cat born under a bush and raised on the street is a street cat. A stray is something else. It’s the dog that slipped out during the fireworks. The cat that stayed behind when the family moved. An animal that had a name and a bowl, and then didn’t.
World Stray Animals Day is on 4 April. More than a hundred Dutch animal organisations started it in 2010, at a national conference on strays. They picked the date because it’s exactly six months from World Animal Day.
How many are there?
In 2024, Mars and a group of animal welfare experts published the biggest study of pet homelessness so far. Across 20 countries, they estimated almost 362 million homeless cats and dogs, about one in three. Very few of them are in shelters. Around 203 million cats and 143 million dogs live on the street, against about 16 million in shelters.
Those are estimates, pieced together from surveys and local data. Nobody has counted the animals one by one. Which is, more or less, the problem.
How a pet ends up on the street
The reasons in that study are ordinary. People move somewhere pets aren’t allowed. They get ill. They run out of time or money, or can’t cope with a pet’s behaviour. About 15% of owners said they were thinking of giving up their pet within the next year.
Losing one is easy, too. Nearly 60% of lost pets never make it back to their owners.
Then nature takes over. In the same study, only about half of dogs and 60% of cats were neutered. An unneutered cat left outside doesn’t stay one cat for long. In Rome, which has neutered its street cats for decades, researchers found that about one cat in five in its colonies was a newcomer, mostly abandoned pets.
The line runs both ways
In plenty of places, the line between pet and stray is thin. Take Cyprus, where we’re based. In a 2025 survey by International Cat Care, 90% of cat owners said their cat had been a stray or roaming cat they took in. For most of those owners, their house cat started out on the street.
So a stray isn’t a lost cause. It’s often a pet between homes.
For dogs, it’s a health question too
Rabies still kills tens of thousands of people a year, most of them in Africa and Asia, and dog bites cause 99% of human cases, according to the World Health Organization. Vaccinating dogs, including street dogs, is how countries get rid of it.
What to do on 4 April
- If you’re moving, sort out your pet first. Check the lease and ask landlords early.
- Microchip your pet and keep the details up to date. A chip is how a lost pet gets home.
- Neuter your pets, indoor ones too. Indoor cats get out.
- If a friendly cat or dog turns up on your street, ask a vet to check for a chip before you decide it’s a stray.
- Thinking of getting a pet? Adopt one that’s already waiting.
- Snap the cats on your street. A cat on the map is a cat someone has seen.
Every cat you catch lands on the map, seen and counted.
