How does a cat find its way home when dropped miles away?

Question

Many years ago my cat escaped from the cage just after seeing the vet.
We searched around for 1h and could not find him.
A week later we found the cat at home!
Both villages are like 3 miles apart and there's many road intersections and fields, it is not an easy and straight road

How is such a miracle possible?
Do they use the wind? rivers? magnetism?
I am looking for a scientific answer, because I found
a similar post a year ago saying they have a good
sense of direction, but that does not explain anything

Answer 1

I don't think there is a scientific answer. Animals have instincts, and sometimes those instincts are triggered by love.

Answer 2

Not every cat does find its way home. :(

I did have one cat that I had raised in one town, then took to my mother's house when I moved. She gave the cat to a farmer seven miles outside town. After less than a week, the cat disappeared from the farm. Six weeks later, it turned up at my mother's. How did that cat know her house? He had been raised 55 miles away!

I started reading on such topics. I never found a good answer, but one that makes some sense is that they have a general sense that "home" is a certain direction, so that start foraging that way. As they cross the territories of other animals, they take bearing from the scent readings. Eventually they cross the path of scents they recognize and follow them home.

In my cat's case, he may have recognized my mother's dog. My mother had the Basset that was the mother of my Basset. Sometimes I would "baby sit" her dog, or she would babysit mine. The cat knew both dogs well.

My Dad was a hunter and Mom would take her dog along when she waited for Dad to come back from a hunt. Who knows? Maybe the cat crossed trails with the dog and kept fine tuning till he reached an area he recognized.

Maybe your cat recognized the scent of your car or something else that led it home.

Answer 3

I think many domestic animals have a "homing instinct." Dogs have been known to travel hundreds of miles to a family's new home. It seems unlikely that it would be following a scent.

Not all pets can or do use this ability, but enough do that the legends stick. Perhaps it's akin to the swallows and Capistrano. They just DO it.

I'm glad you got your cat back. I'd be bereft if anything happened to one of mine!

Answer 4

Most of them don't. They wander, get hit by cars, try to find people who will feed them. A lost cat often is just that, lost.

Answer 5

are you complaining that your cat came back??? an dyou only searched for it for a hour and gave up????? DID you DELIBRATLY drop the cat off 3 miles from ur house i dont understand how you siad it escaped after seeing the vet and it was 3 miles apart and all that.... i dont know dude... but cats are smart animals... maybe you should treat them with more respect.
they find there way back home because they can pic up certain scents and smells just like dogs can.....

Answer 6

cat senses^^ meow~