Are There More Cats or Dogs in the World?
At last estimate, it seems that there are more dogs than cats in the world. Of course, that’s likely to change at any time. As of 2020, it seems that dogs outweigh cats by twice the number. This number, of course, only includes domestic pets and strays. It doesn’t include wild cats and wild dogs, meaning tigers, panthers, wolves, and coyotes.
In fact, it’s been estimated that as of 2022, there are more than 900 million dogs worldwide. As far cats, at last count, it’s estimated that there are around 600 million cats worldwide. That’s quite a difference!
Number of dogs and cats kept as pets worldwide in 2018 (in millions)
| Characteristic | Number of pets in millions |
|---|---|
| Dogs | 471 |
| Cats | 373 |
How Many Dogs Are There Worldwide?
You must keep in mind that this is only a rough number since it’s impossible to go house to house to count how many dogs a household has. Although it’s estimated that there are between 900 million to one billion dogs in the world, fewer than 300 million of these dogs are strays.
We’ll break it down a little further for you below. We can’t break down the animal population in every country, but we included a few in this article.
The United States is a pet-friendly country. According to the Humane Society, 86.4 million cats and 78.2 million dogs live in households across the United States. Remember, this doesn’t include the stray population, only those we know of in households.
More homes own dogs than cats. However, this is thought to be because most people have one dog and at least two cats on average. Sadly, there are still many strays in the shelters and on the streets that need to be given a forever home.
Though Asia has a high population, pets aren’t loved there as much as in Western countries. For example, China has fewer than 26.8 million dogs and 11 million cats. This is strange to some because China has more than five times the number of people that the United States has.
On the other hand, Japan is a smaller country but has over 9.8 million cats and an impressive 13.1 million dogs at last count.
Europe is a continent of so many countries that it’s hard to accurately count how many dogs and cats they have. The most extensive pet survey was taken in 2018 and showed 9.8 million cats and 6.7 million dogs in the United Kingdom. Italy and Poland have around the same amount, but Germany is more evenly divided with 7.8 million cats but only 5.2 million dogs.
Countries like Switzerland seem to love cats more, as they have over 1.4 million felines while having only less than half a million canines.
Population numbers for cats and dogs are hard to come by in Africa because so many remote areas do not report pet statistics. South Africa has the most, with over 7.4 million dogs and only around 2 million cats. On the other hand, Chad seems to have around 25,000 dogs living in homes as pets but has no numbers for cats.
Cats Vs Dogs: Which Makes a Better Pet?
Dogs may be mans best friend, but it doesnt take long perusing Facebook to realize that cat photos and videos are making millions of people say, “Awwwwww.” (And whos ever even heard of a crazy dog lady?) Does that mean cats are more popular than dogs? How many cats are there in the world anyway?
The answer to the first question is, yes, cats are more popular as pets than dogs. In the U.S., more households have dogs than cats – 36.5 percent vs. 30.4 percent; however, there are more cats as pets – nearly 75 million cats vs. nearly 70 million dogs. Around the world cats are also more popular as pets than dogs.
As to the second question, how many cats are there in the world? Well, estimates range from 220 million to 600 million plus. Pinning down an exact number is nearly impossible because counting feral cats – those free-roaming cats that can be found in almost any neighborhood or behind the grocery store or near restaurant garbage bins, which one organization estimated at about 158 million in 2007 – is a lot like trying to herd cats.
“Cats, especially feral cats, do survive and even thrive in most parts of the world,” says Louise Holton, president of Alley Cat Rescue, via email. “Tame housecats, if left to fend for themselves, do suffer. They do not know how to find food, nor shelter, and no doubt this is a very cruel thing to do to a domesticated animal. Those that do make it, either join an existing colony or form one on their own, and can go on to breed and learn how to hunt and scavenge.”
Hunting and scavenging is instinctive in most cats. In fact, as a whole, cats didnt move inside until the 1940s when kitty litter was invented, and many cat experts say they are still most at home in the great outdoors, attributing some bad behavior (think urinating outside the litter box) to the stress of living indoors. (Or working as CEOs?)
Indoors or out, cats, even if they are too sneaky to be counted, are giving dogs a run for their money in the popular pet department. Now Thats Interesting
Domestic and feral cats have all been traced back to a single ancestor: the Near Eastern Wildcat, a species that domesticated itself more than 10,000 years ago by choosing to live near people and feast on the rodents that (literally) plagued early humans.
Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article: Karen Kirkpatrick “So … Just How Many House Cats Are There in the World?” 10 December 2015. HowStuffWorks.com.