The balance in a cat is that, on the one hand, it is an arbitrary hunter who will go wherever the sense of smell carries him; on the other hand, it must have its own center where it regains peace and security. This center gives him our home. But how does the sense in a cat, that it always knows where the house is without a mistake, come from?
One can probably say that where a cat is, there is a house. Residents of the house can always be sure that they are at home until the cat returns to the door from its night travels. How is it that in addition to the hunting sense, the cat has such a developed sense of home? For example, we keep a dog on a chain because the dog is a little helpless when it comes to finding its way home. When he jumps over the fence, we usually look for him in the neighborhood because we are not sure that he will come back alone. For the same reason, when going for a walk with a dog we keep him on a leash and only sometimes we let him run for a while, knowing that we still keep him on the invisible thread of our voice, which by order will bring him back to us. How is it that the cat is not subject to these laws, and yet when released to the court it always comes back home?
Cats have perfectly developed visual memory. It seems that they are too small to orientate in a large urban space, and yet a cat released from the garden can return home from the street despite the fact that the apartment is in a row of tenement houses and theoretically finding a window of the owners' room should be doubly difficult in this system. It should be assumed that the cat in this situation was able to translate the view that it looks at every day from the window into the window that it has now seen from the outside world. It seems to be a very intelligent procedure for a creature who cannot speak. Surely sight plays a very important role in the cat's ability to find a home. And yet, no less important is the sense of smell, thanks to which the cat creates a fragrant cartography of the terrain.
Scientists once conducted a study in which the owners' cats were taken away a few kilometers from the house and left there. Cats always came back. The study was so spectacular that it raised many doubts that they had to be repeated in different conditions. Cats were taken away again, but this time they were anesthetized so that they couldn't record the space they were passing, which in the first research attempt could decide about the success of the research.
Despite the fact that the cats were not aware of the road, and despite the fact that they were taken to areas they did not know, they always returned home. While it is still possible to explain the fact that a cat returns home when it only goes near it, it is difficult to explain the phenomenon of returning from a place tens of kilometers away, in addition to a place that cats did not know before. Scientists explain this phenomenon by the occurrence of a special sense, which is also present in other animals, such as birds. The cat is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field. This sensitivity works on the principle of a compass, which always points north.
A study was conducted in which the cats were fitted with magnets that neutralize the strength of the magnetic field. Cats lost their orientation in the field at that time. Cats that are far away from home behave like a compass, which always shows the north perfectly.... you! home. Another theory says about the "acoustic map" of the area that cats do to themselves on the basis of what they hear. Based on this theory, our furries can orientate themselves up to a distance of 20 km.
Whatever our guesses in this regard, it is certain that the cat will always find a home. There have been situations where the cat was coming home, but old, even though the owners moved to a new place. However, there were also situations when the cat appeared in the new home of the owners even though they left it in the old one. The diversity of these stories shows that cats are not slaves to routine, as is sometimes explained by their behavior. Cats can adapt to their new home very quickly because we, the owners, eventually create it.