More cats paw into the registry

Two years after the requirement that cats be ID marked and registered, there are now just over half a million cats on the rolls of the Swedish Agency for Agriculture.

Last year, 116,723 cats were registered and at the turn of the year – two years after the requirement was introduced – there were thus 527,561 animals in the register, according to statistics recently released by the agency.

At the same time, there are an estimated 1.4 million cats in Sweden, so there is still a long way to go before reaching full registration.

“Based on how many cats there are estimated to be in Sweden after all, we would like to see a somewhat faster influx,” says Anders Elfström, head of department at the agency, in a press release.

He emphasizes that it is about long-term work.

The number of cat owners in the register is 345,962.

Among the new misses last year, Luna was the most common name, with 1,344 registrations, but Sigge still leads the league overall.

The most common in the register’s total of about 50 breeds is the domestic cat, or farm cat as they are also called. They make up 77 percent of all registered cats.

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