Research overview: thermal stress and activity-pattern shifts in cats

As temperatures rise, cats may adjust their activity patterns to avoid heat, shifting toward more nocturnal or crepuscular behavior, with consequences for hunting and human overlap. This overview surveys evidence on how felids thermoregulate behaviorally, how heat affects their activity and movement, and how warming might push more activity into cooler hours. It reviews the interaction with prey activity and with human presence during different times of day. The synthesis frames behavioral thermoregulation as a flexible but bounded response to warming, explaining how cats can partly buffer themselves against heat by shifting when they are active, and why such shifts could alter predator-prey encounters and human-cat conflict patterns under a warming climate.