Everyone says cats hate moving. What nobody can tell you is what those first days actually look like from the cat's side of the door. We put a PG10 GPS Track Logger on Pixel, a seven-year-old house cat, on the day the boxes were packed — and simply let the map keep the diary.
Days 1–3: the box radius
For the first three nights Pixel barely left the garden. The track was a tight, almost apologetic cluster within about eight metres of the back door — three short trips to the same flowerbed, each under four minutes, then straight back inside. Daytime tracks were even shorter. Compared with his old territory map (we had six months of logs from the previous house) his nightly range had collapsed by roughly 85%.
The interesting part wasn't the shrinking. It was that the little he did explore was repeated exactly. Same three flowerbeds. Same route back. Same order. He wasn't wandering — he was rehearsing.
Day 5: the fence line
On the fifth night the cluster opened up for the first time. The trail followed the garden fence — not along it confidently the way it did back home, but in hesitant advances and retreats, about a metre at a time. He stopped at the far corner for eleven seconds and turned around. The next night he went further. By day seven he completed the full perimeter loop for the first time, and from then on the loop stayed.
"Watching the map grow outward day by day was like watching him decide to stay. There was a specific evening — day seven — where it stopped being a strange garden and became his garden."
Day 9: the neighbour negotiations
The ninth track left the garden entirely, crossed the low wall to the left, and met — we assume — whoever already lived there. The dots paused at the boundary for almost two minutes, then Pixel returned home. He repeated the trip the following night and stayed longer. Nothing dramatic happened. It reads, on the map, exactly like a polite introduction being made carefully from a safe distance.
Day 12: the map matches
By the twelfth day Pixel's nightly territory was within about 10% of his old range, with the same structure he had always used: a perimeter patrol, a couple of sitting spots, a loop that ends at the door. Our conclusion from the data was oddly reassuring — he hadn't lost a territory, he had rebuilt one, and the rebuild took twelve days.
What a track logger is good for here
- It replays, it doesn't chase. The PG10 stores the route on the device and shows it later — no live map, no geofence alert, no anxious checking at 2 a.m.
- It works through a move. No SIM card, no monthly fee, no new subscription in a new country — it logs from satellite fix alone.
- Small enough for a stressed cat. At 22 g he wore it through packing, transport and twelve nights of exploration without fuss.
- The timeline is the point. Seeing day one next to day twelve is what turns "he'll adjust eventually" into "he adjusted, and here's the date".
Pixel's map is twelve days long now, and still growing at the edges. The PG10 didn't stop him missing the old house — it just made the new one legible, one small loop at a time.
Also in the field: A cat's night, mapped by GPS · The quiet change