Are You Living in a Dog Country or a Cat Country?

We compared dog and cat ownership across Europe, the US and Australia to find out where dogs rule, where cats have the upper paw, and which countries seem perfectly happy with both.

There are some questions capable of dividing a room almost instantly: tea or coffee, city or countryside, dogs or cats. That last one, it turns out, can divide entire countries too.

We looked at household pet ownership across Europe, the US and Australia to find out where dogs have the advantage, where cats are more widely kept, and where the contest is surprisingly close. While The Dog Edit may have a slight vested interest in the result, the overall picture is rather more mixed than we expected.

Europe has very clearly not agreed

Across Europe, there is no simple geographical divide between dog and cat countries. FEDIAF estimates that 139 million European households — almost half — have at least one pet, but look at dogs and cats country by country and the differences can be striking.

Spain produces perhaps the most eye-catching result. According to FEDIAF’s 2026 report, 70% of Spanish households have at least one dog and 56% have at least one cat. Poland is another heavily pet-owning country, with dogs in 52% of households and cats in 42%. Portugal leans canine too, at 39% versus 32%, while Ireland records 25% of households with dogs and 18% with cats.

Cross a few borders and the balance changes completely. In Switzerland, cats have more than twice the household reach of dogs: 25% compared with just 11%. France also sits firmly on the feline side of our comparison, with cats in 39% of households and dogs in 29%. The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Belgium all record higher household cat ownership too. There is no tidy line running through the continent; Europe is more of a patchwork.

The UK has chosen dogs

Here in the UK, dogs have the advantage. Thirty-six per cent of households have at least one dog, according to FEDIAF’s latest report, compared with 29% with a cat.

It’s a meaningful lead, but nowhere near the gulf seen in some other dog-loving countries. Perhaps we’re not quite the nation of dog obsessives we imagine ourselves to be, or perhaps the cats are simply better at keeping a lower profile.

America isn’t particularly conflicted

Cross the Atlantic and dogs open up a considerably larger lead. The latest figures from the American Pet Products Association put dogs in 53% of US households, compared with cats in 39%. That’s approximately 71 million dog-owning households and 53 million cat-owning households.

Those figures have risen since 2024, when APPA recorded dog ownership at 51% and cat ownership at 37%. The gap between them remains substantial, but both animals are finding their way into more American homes.

Australia is dog country too

Australia produces a similar result. Animal Medicines Australia’s Pets in Australia 2025 found dogs in 49.3% of households and cats in 33.6%, translating to an estimated 7.4 million dogs and 5.8 million cats across the country. Pet ownership more broadly is extraordinarily common, with 73% of Australian households now having at least one pet.

Dog and cat ownership have both increased over the longer term. In 2019, 40% of Australian households had a dog; by 2025, that figure had reached 49%. Cat ownership rose from 27% to 34% over the same period. Both species are doing rather well, although dogs retain a comfortable lead.

Spain might need its own category

There is one result in the European data that deserves another look: Spain, where 70% of households have a dog and 56% have a cat.

Before anyone reaches for a calculator, there’s an important detail about what these figures actually measure. They are the percentage of households with at least one dog or at least one cat, and the categories aren’t mutually exclusive. A household containing both a dog and a cat is counted in both groups, so the figures don’t need to add up to 100%.

Nor do they tell us that 70% of all Spanish pets are dogs, or necessarily that there are more individual dogs than cats. They tell us how widely each species is distributed across households. Even with that caveat, Spain appears to have answered the question dogs or cats? with a fairly emphatic both.

And then there’s Switzerland

At the opposite end of our admittedly dog-biased spectrum sits Switzerland. Only 11% of Swiss households have a dog, compared with 25% with a cat, giving it the biggest proportional feline advantage among the countries in our original comparison.

It isn’t alone. France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden all fall on the cat side of our comparison, while the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Poland fall on the dog side. There are some regional patterns in the figures, but not enough to draw a clean border between the two camps.

A note on the numbers

There is an important caveat when comparing countries like this. The European figures come from FEDIAF’s 2026 Annual Report, but the underlying pet-population data are predominantly from 2024. FEDIAF also uses estimates for some countries where national data aren’t available and notes differences in methodology between sources. Switzerland’s figures use 2025 data under a new methodology.

The American figures come from APPA’s latest US data, while Australia’s are from Animal Medicines Australia’s 2025 national survey. This isn’t, therefore, one enormous global survey in which everybody was asked precisely the same question at precisely the same time. The figures are useful for looking at broad patterns, but a one- or two-percentage-point difference shouldn’t be treated as definitive evidence of a national preference.

Household ownership doesn’t necessarily tell us whether a country actually likes dogs or cats more, either. We haven’t yet found a scientifically robust way of measuring how many people stop whatever they’re doing whenever they see a dog on the other side of the road.

So, are we a dog world or a cat world?

Even the phrase dog country needs a little qualification. These numbers measure household ownership rather than national affection, cultural importance or the total population of each animal. What they do show is how differently dogs and cats are distributed between homes around the world.

Two neighbouring European countries can produce remarkably different results, and places where dogs seem culturally ubiquitous don’t necessarily have the highest rates of dog ownership. Some countries, meanwhile, appear to have rejected the entire premise of choosing between the two.

So, are you living in the right country?

Dogs. Cats. We’re not picking sides. (Obviously we are.)