I wonder how far strays travel.

You know? Like Cammy and Hef? I wonder if they came from someone in my town or even further. I was just thinking about that for some reason. I suppose someone from another town could have dumped them here too.

I once had a tom cat run away. A friend brought him back to me, having found him in a market parking lot in town, almost 10 miles away. We don't know if he hitched a ride in the truck, or merely just wandered off, but it was a lucky find to get him back! Especially when it's cold, cats have been known to crawl up into engines to keep warm, and end up miles, even hundreds of miles, away from "home". Not all strays are abandoned. Sadly, some just get lost. Not to say I haven't seen dozens of them tossed out or dumped, even from moving vehicles, but sometimes cats do like to wander, Sometimes they just wander a little too far.

I'm pretty sure that naturally their territories are pretty big, up to a few square miles, depending upon the area. Probably smaller the more urban the area. But I do think that their territories evolve, and if they're not spayed or neutered, they may roam to different places, and get pretty far. We've definitely seen ferals we were caring for at least a mile away from here. If we stopped feeding them and they couldn't find anything near, they'd move, so I'm not surprised to hear a Tom was 10 miles away (though hitching a ride in a truck is a definite possibility. Stories like that turn up here. I'm not so sure they'd survive an engine that was running if they were up in there).

Laurie