How many cats are there in the world?

500 million estimated at 2011. There are some idiotic answers on the Internet. We don't know how many cats there are in the world. By far the greater proportion of cats are domestic cats. There are relatively few wildcats left in the world. My estimate is that 99.9% of all cats in the world are domestic, feral or stray cat.

Countries like France, Germany and the UK have about 10 million domestic cats each. You would have to add feral cats to that. There would seem to be an equal number of feral cats and domestic cats in the USA (see below) so I wonder whether that rule applies to European countries. I sense that there are less feral cats proportionally in northern European countries because of the climate. In Mediterranean European countries there is no doubt that there are more feral cats in proportion to the total.

The UK has 400 wildcats - the Scottish wildcat.

There are about 80 million domestic cats and 80 million feral cats in the USA (160m total). There is probably about 50 million domestic and feral cats in each of China and India. These three countries combined amount to 260 million. Continents such as Africa and South America probably have 50 million each making 360 million.

These figures give us an idea what the grand total probably is and about 500 millions feels right.

But it is guesswork. We don't count cats! Estimates can be quite incorrect.