Cat Chat Feline Forum

So some people may have seen a thread a while back where I was being all mother hen and panicky over letting my boys out post-moving house, but equally they were driving me bananas being shut in! Well we made it to two weeks, and they were then set free much to their delight. Other than occasional stopping out later than I'd like and Monty deciding to cross the (quiet, but still) road to hang out over on the other side when there are perfectly good gardens here he wouldn't need to risk cars to snooze in, they've adjusted pretty well. But now I'm having some Loc8tor troubles and wondered if anyone had any advice.

I got a Pet Loc8tor tracker thing to assist with the post-move stress and help track them down at cat curfew time or if they got a bit lost, and it initially seemed pretty good. It's one of the trackers that uses radio signals so can be affected by things like walls and fences if it's in the line of sight. Monty lost his breakaway collar the first day but I walked around to the cul de sac backing on to our gardens where I suspected he'd been and located it with the tracker within five minutes - it was in a hedge in a back garden but the tracker beeped as I walked up the road. All good. But then Rolo lost his collar two days later and I never found it again - I walked all around the block, a couple of roads over one way and up the side roads the other way, a forty minute search tracking all the while. It's suburban Bristol and pretty dense housing. Not a blip.

I ordered a set of two replacement tags and fitted Rolo with another one on Friday, but now today Monty came home without his collar - and again I've walked around the block and all the places I've seen him or suspect he'd go and not a blip. So that's two tags lost in the space of a week. Since the first loss I also got a tag with my number and address on so someone may find it in their garden and stick it through my letter box, but I'm not holding my breath. Either the cats are roaming significantly further than I'd suspect, or the tags are getting lost far from the street and blocked in by things like walls, fences and hedges which restricts the signal. If a tag is e.g. tucked away between a hefty plant pot and a wall you'd probably have to be in the garden for it to activate.

I'm not keen to switch to even elasticated safety collars - they might be harder to lose but equally they're a lot more likely to lead to injury. And I'm not keen to keep forking out £28 for a set of two tags plus more for the rubber casings to attach them to collars. So do I just write off this tracking experiment as an expensive settling in tool? Does anyone else use any of the other sorts of trackers? In an ideal world I'd get something that uses GPS so I can log in to a website and see where they are "live", but all those sorts of trackers seem to cost a small fortune or need a monthly fee - which would be double for two cats. Should I just try to stop being paranoid and go back to non-tracking free range felines?

In all honesty, the cost of replacing the collar and loc8tor tag is what stopped me using it. I think one of the issues is that the plastic bit that holds the tag in place is quite big and gives too much scope for snagging, hence the collars coming loose. Ask Marla - at one point I was ordering collars 10 at a time just so I always had replacements in. But now that I've taken the loc8tor bit off they haven't lost a collar.

Yes, would be nice to have but as you say - the replacement cost is just quite prohibitive

Oh, to answer you question re the GPS - I had one and it was super interesting. You couldn't track your cat live but when the cat got back you could connect the little device to your computer and it would show you where they'd been. Quite interesting really... but when Abbie came home minus collar and GPS thing that's when I stopped because to replace all items would have cost about £70 or so

Tempted as I am to see what Daz gets up to, he can't keep a collar on for long even without any dangly bits, so I've never even attempted this. The rest of the gang are middle aged or elderly and really don't go far enough to warrant it.

Perhaps you now have enough of an idea of where they go at the new house and no longer need it as much?