The Veterinary Record, Vol 153, Issue 18, 549-553
Copyright © 2003 by British Veterinary Association

Study of factors that may predispose domestic cats to road traffic accidents: part 1

¹ Animal Welfare and Human-Animal Interactions Group, Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ES

Between March 2000 and February 2001, six veterinary practices in Cambridgeshire collected data on 117 owned cats which they had examined after a road accident. For one week every month during the same year, the practices distributed questionnaires to the owners of cats which had been examined for reasons other than a road accident, and the data from these cats were checked to ensure that they were representative of the practice records, which were compared with a survey of the owned cat population for age and sex. From this population, the cats that were allowed outdoors and had never been in a road accident were chosen as controls, and compared with the cats that had been in a road accident for age, sex, pedigree status and coat colour. The cats that had been in a road accident differed from the control population with respect to age, sex and pedigree status; for every one-year increase in age, the odds of a road accident decreased by 16 per cent; the odds for males (entire and neutered) being in a road accident were 1·9 times the odds for females (entire and neutered), and the odds for pedigree cats were 0·29 those for non-pedigree cats.