About three out of four South African households do not have any pets. But among those who do, dogs are by far the favourite.
Are South Africans dog or cat people?
The question has now been definitively settled: We are a nation of dog lovers, owning about 7.4 million of these furkids.
By contrast, we own only about 2 million cats.
But, perhaps more interestingly, fewer than one in four households (23.5%) own either or both of these pets. An average of 76.4% of households have neither cats nor dogs.
Questions on dog and cat ownership were included for the first time in the General Household Survey (GHS), of which the 2025 report was released by Statistics SA on Tuesday.
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The statistics show a clear link between household living standards and pet ownership. In the group tagged living standard measures (LSM) 1 to 4, dog ownership is 15.6% and cat ownership 6%, while it surges to 41.8% for dogs and 12.7% for cats for LSM 8 to 10. LSM measures income, access to services, and household assets such as appliances.
Wealthier households are more likely to have pets.
Facts and furrytales
According to Niël Roux, director of service delivery statistics at Statistics SA, the animal welfare groups Four Paws and the National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA) requested the statistics body to include household pets in the survey. To start with, only dogs and cats were included.
The interest is in getting to grips with numbers and, eventually, also with sterilisation and vaccination.
“Because we’ve never included questions about pets, we have to justify it by looking at the broader interest of the information, and to ensure that the population measured is large enough to lead to meaningful estimates.”
According to the GHS, an “accurate measurement of pet dog and cat populations is essential to understand their size, distribution and human-animal dynamics, supporting effective immunisation, sterilisation, and control of zoonotic diseases such as rabies.”
The sheer number of dogs (7.4 million) far exceeds any previous estimate. In 2023, BrandMapp estimated that there were about 2 million pet dogs in the country.
The BrandMapp survey valued the pet goods market at R5 billion to R7 billion based on 2 million dogs, which suggests it could be worth a whole lot more. Several retailers have in recent years expanded their furkid offerings: the Shoprite group opened its first Petshop Science store in 2021 and has expanded rapidly, now operating almost 150 stores; Woolworths acquired Absolute Pets shops and spas in 2024; and Spar launched Pet Storey in September 2025.
With only 17.2% of households owning dogs, and another 3.8% owning both cats and dogs, this means about 4.2 million households own 7.4 million dogs – an average of 1.8 dogs per household.
The trend with cat ownership is similar. About 2.5% of households own only cats, and another 3.8% have both, meaning that 1.3 million households own 2 million cats – an average of 1.5 cats per household.
About 23.5% of SA households have either cats or dogs, or both.
Dog ownership is most prevalent in the Northern Cape (34.7%), Western Cape (34.1%), and Eastern Cape (31.8%), and least common in Gauteng (15.9%). This is when people with only dogs, and those with dogs and cats, are included.
Household ownership of cats was highest in the Western Cape (13.5%) – double the 6.3% national average for those with only cats, and those with cats and dogs.
Pet ownership as a percentage of households is highest in the Northern Cape and lowest in Mpumalanga.
Roux emphasises that the data does not include stray animals, only those regarded as a household “property” (cats will no doubt be offended by the word; they don’t have owners, they have servants).
Roux foresees that future surveys will include questions on sterilisation and vaccination, and hopefully about animals such as donkeys, horses and others kept in urban areas.
A kitten called Zora. About 2 million cats consider themselves owned by SA households.
