How do cats find their way home from miles away?

[melnc]

Alright, but like, how do they actually do it? Are they using smell, memory, or what?

[purplepoppy]

animals are pretty good at finding their way using local land marks and familiar scents or just common sense e. g follow the road or go up hill.

But when you hear stories of cats travelling huge distances to be reunited with their owner these stories are always owners mistaking a local cat for theirs. Cats tend to look the same and if the doors open and there's food they'll walk in.

[Kvass]

Cats map their territory using landmarks, which can be quite large. The occasional story about a cat who finds his owners kilometers away is usually part luck, part exaggeration.

[itss_lily]

cats are smart animals and they have a stronger sense of smell and possibly use visual markers to assess the way

[Spencer10]

Its a mystery... Feline GPS perhaps?

[Anonymous]

They remember which way they went