Cat and dog owning households in Norway 2010-2023

From 2010 to 2023, the share of Norwegian households which owned a cat remained steady at around one-third. By comparison, over this period, around 17 percent of households owned at least one dog. Cats seemed to be a very popular pet in Norway; the number increased in recent years and peaked in 2021 and 2022 at 783,000 animals.  

 Pet cats in Sweden

In Norway’s neighboring country Sweden, the situation was similar. Since 2012, the share of households owning at least one cat remained between 16 and 21 percent, while 13 to 16 percent of Swedish households owned a dog. In this country, too, cats were more common to have as a pet than dogs. As of 2023, there were around 1.72 million pet cats registered in Sweden.

Pet cats in Denmark

The population of pet cats in Denmark in 2023 was estimated to be 698,000. Unlike in Norway and Sweden, the share of households owning cats as a pet in this year was much lower than households owning a pet dog. It is striking that the situation was different before. From 2016 to 2019, the share of households owning at least one dog remained stable at around 23 percent, while it was about 27 percent for pet cats.