Cat Collar or no cat collar

Our cats go out. We're in the UK where the cultural expectation on this is more towards outdoor kitties. They never go much further than 100 yards from the house, and they're shut in every evening, because we have foxes living nearby.

I'm not a fan of collars. All the cats I've ever owned have shed them within about 20 minutes and a friend of mine had a cat that choked to death when it got its collar stuck on a branch.

Microchips are great. Register them - again, I'm not sure about this because I'm in the UK but our chip company does one registration free and then you pay to update the info when you move. It's about £15 to update the info.

Some cats are fine with indoors and don't care about outside. Others desperately want to go outside. My old cat, Olive, we could no more have kept inside than we could have turned her into a bird. She was escaping to the outdoors from about 3 months.

Do what's best for you and your cat, and apply all reasonable safety measures. And neuter, neuter neuter. Neutered cats don't roam so far and don't indulge in such risky behaviour and are less agressive, all of which will help keep them safe if they go outside. Plus, no unwanted kittens to live short, brutal lives.

Growing up, all our cats were outdoor cats. There was never a litter box in the house either. I lived in a city, but my neighborhood was a quiet cove on the ocean. There was no traffic. We lost one cat to a dog attack (that particular dog killed other dogs and attacked people too, it was eventually destroyed). The others all lived to ripe old ages, from fourteen to nineteen.

I would never put a collar on a cat. A cat is too likely to damage themselves with it.

The area I live now is not as suitable for outdoor cats. My neighbor lets their cats out, but he has a large area of woods behind his house that my cats wouldn't have access to. If I had a cat that needed to be outside (one of the cats we had when I was kid hated to be inside) I would give the cat to my folks who still live in that quiet neighborhood.

It depends on where you live and the temperament of the cat. One piece of advice I agree with though is neuter, neuter, neuter.

darkelf

darkelf said:

Growing up, all our cats were outdoor cats. There was never a litter box in the house either. I lived in a city, but my neighborhood was a quiet cove on the ocean. There was no traffic. We lost one cat to a dog attack (that particular dog killed other dogs and attacked people too, it was eventually destroyed). The others all lived to ripe old ages, from fourteen to nineteen.

I would never put a collar on a cat. A cat is too likely to damage themselves with it.

The area I live now is not as suitable for outdoor cats. My neighbor lets their cats out, but he has a large area of woods behind his house that my cats wouldn't have access to. If I had a cat that needed to be outside (one of the cats we had when I was kid hated to be inside) I would give the cat to my folks who still live in that quiet neighborhood.

It depends on where you live and the temperament of the cat. One piece of advice I agree with though is neuter, neuter, neuter.

darkelf

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That's why breakaway collars were invented. Enough pressure and the collar will open, so even if a cat gets hooked or gets a paw through the collar, they won't be injured because the collar will give way.

As noted in the awesome study posted on the previous page, the vast majority of collared cats keep their collars on with no issues.

Collars on cats make me nervous because of the strangling thing although in all my years I have only heard of one cat strangling and that was a friend's, some thirty years ago. I'll take the flea collars off my cats in a few weeks when the local flea population freezes down to a manageable hundred million. These are pasture fleas and nothing else works with them. --s6

I had an outdoor cat (farm cat, she was never really indoors, just showed up for breakfast). She wore a normal collar her whole life and never ran into any difficulties because of it.

EMaree said:

I had an outdoor cat (farm cat, she was never really indoors, just showed up for breakfast). She wore a normal collar her whole life and never ran into any difficulties because of it.

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Cats can get in trouble with 'regular', like belt-style collars. A veterinary nurse told me they'd seen really tragic injuries from cats getting their collars hung up on something and injuring themselves struggling to get free.

However, again, breakaway collars are the solution to that issue.



They secure the regular way for a proper fit, but they have a mechanism, the front bit above, that, under enough tension, will open, so if the cat gets the collar hung up on something or something wedged under the collar, it will pop off. It won't just by normal stuff like scratching the neck or rubbing up against things, it takes tension.

Just FYI, they make flea and tick breakaways now too.

aimeestates said:

Step 1: Register the microchip!

Step 2: Break away collar for cats.

Step 3: Letting a cat outside is dangerous for the cat and the critters in your neighborhood.

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This: All our cats are indoors. Their adoption agreements actually require them to be, and there are tons of data about the relative longevity of indoor versus outdoor cats (especially out west in coyote country) and their effect on local wildlife. But they all have microchips and they all have breakaway collars with tags, just in case they get out. None of them are terribly inclined to try and escape. Sometimes they pop the catch on their collars while playing, but that's the collars doing their job. Better the collar pop off than for them to get it stuck on something.

When I was a kid, all our cats went out and had normal collars, and none of them had issues with the collars. One died of FIV, which is an infection outdoor cats are more likely to get, one was poisoned, and two lived to ripe old ages (19 and 20, respectively). These were the ones who stayed closest to home.

Many cats do wear normal collars and live long lives. But that's a bit like pointing out that many people lived long lives in the days before seat belts became mandatory in cars. One of my friend's cats hung herself by getting her collar caught up on the bed springs (cats love to slit the white membrane on the underside of box springs and crawl up inside). It was really sad. I've been an advocate of breakaway collars ever since.

Breakaway collars work really well. I keep them on our cats. I buy the ones from Target because they're only $3-$4, and they tend to lose them 4 or 5 times a year. Sucks when that happens, but then I figure the collar must be doing its job.

Every cat we owned were outside cats. Some lived into their teens, others disappeared, never to be seen again. Some were scarred by fights with other cats, dogs, raccoons or wildlife. They were not collared or microchipped. That was back in the 70s and 80s.

Our most recent cat was destined to be an indoor cat. He got outside accidentally three times in his eight year life, but apparently got confused because there wasn't a ceiling over his head. He is happy, healthy, of decent weight, and has no scars.

Some of our former cats lived long lives, Trixie being one. She dropped in the front yard at fifteen years old, but I think she had used up all of her nine lives before then. She fell out of a shrubbery and broke her leg, she was bitten on the cheek and had an infection, she almost succumbed to heat stroke and I found her in the back yard, close to death. Another time, she wouldn't get up, because someone had kicked her in the ribs. By the end of her life, she was a mess, often forgetting where her food bowl was, but I attributed that to kitty dementia.

Ridley is now about eight years old, and we occasionally put a halter on him and let him explore the yard. His fur is sleek and free of tangles, and he gets plenty of exercise chasing milk caps all over the house. My husband thinks the cat would be happier outdoors, chasing butterflies and feeling the warm breeze on his fur, but my daughter would KILL us if anything ever happened to him if he was outdoors.

Besides, our local bylaws forbid free roaming cats.

For just in case, we keep a collar on him, with his rabies license on it. He isn't microchipped. I didn't realize you had to register every year. Maybe it's not the same here in Canada.

Decades ago, one of our cats disappeared for three weeks. He had been stuck in a tree, and someone tied two ladders together to get him down. The tag on his collar traced him back to us. He was skinny and stinky, but he lived another decade.

Don't know if this helps, but I loved all those cats, even the whiney one.

O..k...

Just a note about the microchip registration, for anyone interested. I'm sure there are other companies but I know of HomeAgain (I don't work for them or anything of the sort, it was the chip the shelter placed).

The fee is <$20 a year, and you can register any brand chip with them.

Registration includes being in the db, obviously, plus if you report a lost pet, they send out an alert to any members in the area who have agreed to receive them, with the info you've included, and vets and such. When you call to report, they can also send you a list of the shelters, vets, etc. local to your area, so you can alert them and check with them.

There's also a 24-hour vet-staffed emergency line you can call for advice for free (in general, for anything, not having to do with anyone being lost), and if your pet is recovered 500 miles away or more, they'll give you $500 toward the expense of getting the pet back home.

For like <$1.50 a month, it's not bad, imo. Hopefully one never needs to use it, but same as pet insurance, better to have it and not have needed it than need it and not have it I think.

Sounds reasonable.

Thanks for the info about breakaway collars, everyone, I'll definitely use them if/when I get another cat.

A few people in our local area don't collar or chip their cats and it's a nightmare. And, as we found out recently, they don't always neuter them...

We had one gorgeous tortoiseshell/calico cat take a shine to our house a few weeks ago, cosy up to the dogs and start sleeping in our living room all day long. We thought she was going to be a no-chip-no-collar cat and took her to the vet to find out, but fortunately she had a microchip. The vets took her in and the owners collected her, paid the microchip scan fee plus room and board, and got the news that their kitty was pregnant.

Ha, appropriately enough for this thread, one of our cats lost his breakaway collar a week ago, and has been naked since. I just discovered it in the closet this morning. Most commonly the collars pop off when they're playing. But you don't want them to get tangled up in each other's collars then either.

I have a Siamese cat too. When she was a kitten, we got her a collar but she would always manage to get it off so we just gave up. Cats will always come back to their home so I wouldn't worry as long as you've microchipped her. My grandmother didn't see her cat for weeks but he managed to return home. Cats are pretty smart animals so as long as they know that they'll get food when they get home, they'll always come back.
If you really want to then by all means, get her a collar. But don't force it back onto her if she tears it off. If she explores the area around your home and gets to know where everything is, she'll know how to come back home.

A bell never stopped my cat hunting. She just learned to move in such a way that the bell didn't ring.

aimeestates said:

Step 1: Register the microchip!

Step 2: Break away collar for cats.

Step 3: Letting a cat outside is dangerous for the cat and the critters in your neighborhood.

Click to expand...

this

aimeestates said:

Step 1: Register the microchip!

Step 2: Break away collar for cats.

Step 3: Letting a cat outside is dangerous for the cat and the critters in your neighborhood.

Click to expand...

This!

EMaree said:

The vets took her in and the owners collected her, paid the microchip scan fee plus room and board, and got the news that their kitty was pregnant.

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Italics are mine.

The room and board are perfectly reasonable, but a microchip scan fee? I'm sorry but that's just messed up. I worked for a vet for seven years and we would NEVER have charged someone to scan for a chip.

First of all, it takes two seconds and is genuinely effortless. You just wave the scanner over the animal's neck and shoulder-blades. If there's a chip "Beep," the number pops up. There's no expenditure on our part and it takes no medical or animal handling skill.

Second, the owners have already paid to have the microchip implanted and registered. The scanning service should be part of the package. Even if that particular pet didn't get their microchip at your facility, it's understood that other vets would return the courtesy. It's the same reason we didn't charge to remove stitches. When you perform surgery, it's a given that the stitches will have to come out at some point and the entire surgery, start to finish, is included in the initial bill.

Third, a fee would discourage people from bringing in found animals for scanning, destroying the whole point of microchipping.

Finally, the found animals were frequently our own patients. It makes sense when you think about it. People go to a vet that's near their house. The pet gets loose from their yard and the person who finds it will take it to the nearest vet to get scanned. Heck, sometimes we didn't even have to scan it, we'd recognize the pet the moment it came through the door.

We have a responsibility to our pet owners. I can't imagine looking a client in the eye and telling them, "Oh, you could have gotten your dog back, but we didn't scan it because the person who brought it in didn't have any cash."

Personally, I found it a pleasure to track down the owners of microchipped animals. Sometimes it took three or four phone calls to get to them, but when someone bursts into tears of relieved joy because they've been worried sick for a week, it's nice to know you've made their day that much better.

A final note: Where I live, city employees who clean up roadkill also scan deceased dogs and cats for microchips. It's a sad situation, but at least knowing what happened to the animal can give worried owners some closure.

End rant.

And, back on subject. Breakaway cat collars complete with tags are definitely the way to go, for outdoor OR indoor kitties. If nothing else, people will recognize your cat as someone's pet instead of just assuming it lives on the streets and either ignoring it or "adopting" it without trying to find the owner.

Tazlima said:

First of all, it takes two seconds and is genuinely effortless. You just wave the scanner over the animal's neck and shoulder-blades. If there's a chip "Beep," the number pops up. There's no expenditure on our part and it takes no medical or animal handling skill.

Second, the owners have already paid to have the microchip implanted and registered. The scanning service should be part of the package..

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They did not pay that fee to the vet, who gave their cat a 15 minute appointment. As a reclaiming owner, I would not hesitate to pay it.

If the vet chooses to comp it, great. But they are giving up the money a paying client would have given them for the same appointment. I don't think that kind of charity should be taken for granted.

veinglory said:

They did not pay that fee to the vet, who gave their cat a 15 minute appointment. As a reclaiming owner, I would not hesitate to pay it.

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Ah. A 15 minute vet appointment is an entirely different thing from simply checking for a microchip. The vet's time definitely has value and should be appropriately compensated.

The previous post stated that the fee was "a microchip scan fee," which does not require the presence of a vet and takes must less time than 15 minutes. That's why I was rather shocked to read about it. Our receptionist could check for a microchip at the front counter as easily as she could look up an appointment date, and we would as soon have charged for one as the other.

The former is a perfectly reasonable charge, while the latter crosses the line into the unethical.

I also meant no criticism toward the pet owner. I, too, would gladly pay whatever fees necessary to get back my lost pet and I would thank everyone involved in the return. I just didn't like the idea of taking advantage of an owner when they're in an emotionally vulnerable place. Thank you for clarifying. My faith in humanity has been restored.

I have two indoor cats (we live in the city, where an outdoor cat is street pizza waiting to happen). The male wears a collar, the female does not. Here is why: the male always tried to sneak outside. The female is cautious and wouldn't go near an open door if the house was on fire. The male doesn't mind his collar at all; the female hated wearing one.

We have a 20' lead on the front porch. We use the collar to put our little escape artist on the porch where he can explore and get a better gander at nature. He resisted the first 2 times, then he realized it was a real treat to be outside and now he sits down and waits for us to hook him to his lead. It's super cute. No more "escaping," he now asks permission.

We only let him out there when we are enjoying the porch ourselves and can supervise him, just so he doesn't get in any dangerous entanglements.