A global appreciation day on August 8 celebrating cats and raising awareness of the welfare of pet, stray, and free-roaming cats worldwide.
“IFAW launched the day in 2002; by press accounts International Cat Care took it over in 2020.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) created International Cat Day in 2002 to celebrate cats and raise awareness of cats in need around the world. Press accounts report that in 2020 the British charity International Cat Care took over running the day, and it now describes itself as the day's custodian and co-ordinator.
The world's two biggest cat charities have, between them, raised one August date. A group headquartered in the United States invented International Cat Day in 2002. Then it handed the day off to a British charity that had been around far longer than the holiday itself.
That British steward, International Cat Care, traces its roots to 1958, when it was a small outfit called the Feline Advisory Bureau. By the time it inherited the day, it had spent decades quietly changing how vets handle cats.
The reach is not small. International Cat Care estimates its work touches over 25 million cats worldwide each year. That is the organization now choosing the annual theme behind a date most people think of simply as a day to spoil the cat on the sofa.
DEALS & OFFERS
International Cat Day ran on August 8. Here’s who celebrated with offers this year.
Long before there was a day for cats, there was a woman in Britain frustrated by how little anyone seemed to know about treating them. The cat had spent millennia beside humans, yet cat-specific veterinary knowledge had badly lagged.
In 1958, a cat breeder named Joan Judd founded the Feline Advisory Bureau to fix exactly that. Her aim was practical, not sentimental: get better, cat-specific knowledge into veterinary practice. The charity she started would outlive her by decades and, long after her death, end up running a worldwide holiday she never lived to see.
For half a century the Feline Advisory Bureau worked away at feline medicine and welfare. Its reach widened well past Britain. In 2013, the group renamed itself International Cat Care to match what it had become, and Joan Judd, then in her nineties, died later that same year.
Cats are no longer only a household subject. Hundreds of millions now live outdoors and unowned, far outnumbering the ones on laps. That scale turned the cat into something scientists and ecologists track as carefully as conservationists track wildlife.
Into this picture came the holiday. In 2002, the International Fund for Animal Welfare created International Cat Day on August 8, framing it around cats in need as much as cats on laps. It was a US-rooted group speaking to a global problem.
Then the day moved. By press accounts, custodianship passed to International Cat Care in 2020, putting the older British charity in charge of the younger American holiday. The newer steward chooses an annual theme, such as the 2025 campaign tagged "#CatFriendlyEveryDay."
WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
A celebration day that points at the cats no one is celebrating.
Unlike a simple appreciation day, International Cat Day was created with welfare at its core, aimed at cats in need around the world. That framing makes it as much about strays and shelters as about the cat asleep on the windowsill.
Free-roaming cats sit at the center of a real argument between welfare and conservation. The day gives that tension an annual moment, pairing celebration with honest information about cats living outdoors.
A British charity co-ordinates the day while US welfare groups such as Best Friends Animal Society mark August 8 independently. That spread is what separates this date from the several national cat days tied to single countries.
TIMELINE
BY THE NUMBERS
GOOD TO KNOW
IFAW's figures split the roughly 600 million cats into about 220 million owned house cats and around 480 million stray or feral ones. Because feral cats cannot be counted precisely, all of these remain estimates.
The 2023 global synthesis found islands hold roughly threefold more conservation-concern species in cat diets than continents do, which is why cats are treated as a global ecology issue, not just a pet one.
On the day it helped create, IFAW warns that a pet cat "might be a coldblooded killer" and urges keeping cats indoors, because ecologists treat outdoor domestic cats as an invasive species.
IFAW cites research that feral cats on islands are responsible for at least 14 percent of bird, mammal, and reptile extinctions worldwide, and are a principal threat to almost 8 percent of critically endangered such species.
The 2013 US estimate attributed about 69 percent of the country's cat-caused bird deaths to un-owned cats rather than pets. The figure is a contiguous-US estimate, not a global one.
MYTH VS FACT
August 8 was chosen for an ancient Egyptian "Feast of the Cat."
No IFAW or International Cat Care primary source documents why August 8 was picked. The Egyptian feast claim circulates on aggregator sites but is unsourced, so the real reason for the date is simply undocumented.
People assume there is one worldwide "cat day," so International Cat Day, National Cat Day, and Global Cat Day must all be the same observance.
They are three separately founded days on three different dates. August 8 is International Cat Day (IFAW, now International Cat Care). October 29 is the US National Cat Day, founded in 2005 by Colleen Paige. October 16 is Global Cat Day, also called National Feral Cat Day, run by Alley Cat Allies, whose worldwide name is the easiest to mistake for the August date.
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Test your knowledge
No. It is an unofficial global observance, not a public or bank holiday, so it is a normal working day in every country.
COLOPHON
An awareness observance on March 2 promoting the rescue and adoption of homeless, stray, and shelter cats and raising awareness of cat welfare and the work of rescue organizations.
Show your support for our furry friends on National Feral Cat Day - spay/neuter, adopt, and donate to help cats in need!
Show your feline friends some extra love this Global Cat Day - spoil them with treats and lots of cuddles!
