Cat collars - final verdict?

[MrD20]

Hi all. Some of you may remember Dennis the kitten... he’s not so little anymore! (Picture attached)
We are getting to the stage now where we are thinking about him going out unsupervised with his cat flap, and initially started him wearing a collar. The trouble is everytime we put one on him he just seems so uncomfortable & I don’t think it’s for him!
We had an incident in the garden earlier where he jumped onto the fence & one of my plant pots with a hook on it got caught on his collar. It’s a quick release collar but remained on long enough that I had to remove the collar myself.
This has spooked me and I feel as though I’m just going to bin collars altogether, he appears well looked after, he’s microchipped.. so I think I’d feel more comfortable if he was without one. My only niggle is he is brown/black & visibility at night worries me.
I know this is an ongoing debate but what is your current consensus re: collars?

Thanks 😊

No, mine got his lower jaw caught in his, he was missing for two days, when we found him, he had rubbed the fur from his neck and was a very sick boy. (He only had the use of one front leg due to an old injury so couldn't use his paws to pull it off).

Thank you so much for your helpful comments!! And also your messages regarding Dennis, he is just over 6 months old (picture attached of him recently in a hilarious sleeping position!)

Wow some of the stories regarding cat collars send shivers! I understand all cats / owners are different, but knowing Dennis & his personality (he lives up to his name shall we say)... I can imagine him getting into a pickle with a collar!

We use collars on ours. Didn't to start with, but read on local Facebook groups too many times about people approaching collarless cats thinking they were strays & actually removing the cat from its environment. I witnessed it first hand with people approaching ours too. Always have a quick release collar on now & bring her inside once its dark. Don't trust other people or foxes etc not to get her.

Don't make the collar "very tight" whatever a PP says!!! Very poor advice. It's the equivalent of a slow strangle and it's really cruel.

Better to get the ones with a break-free fastener than a buckle ones, and make sure it has stretch elastic too, and keep it slightly looser than you might think with plenty of room for fingers.

Microchipping is all very well if the cat is alive and well, but if they are injured or dead (sadly) then a collar with the owner's number clearly identified on it is likely to get that news to the owner.

A lot of people won't want to deal with an injured cat in case they become responsible for the costs and also because if it's in a bad state it's unpleasant to see. They won't know the cat is chipped just by looking at it. Also there's the getting it to the vets if badly injured - not a nice job. If they can make contact with the owner via an easily readable tag on the collar then that's a lot better.

But please do not tighten cat's collars until "very tight". The "as long as you can fit two fingers under it" is wrong unless you can easily do that with a reasonable amount of slack to spare. We can all likely squeeze into trousers with a waistband that is 2 sizes too small but would you be comfortable wearing them all day, every day and unable to communicated how deeply uncomfortable you are?

Break-free collars with an elastic panel is preferable at a nice non-tight fit. I can probably get four fingers easily under my cat's collar, so if he did get entangled it would enlarge so much he would actually slide out of it.

The main argument in favour of collars I've heard is that it's easier to locate a missing cat that's wearing a collar - at least in terms of getting accurate sightings. The general public is useless at telling two cats apart so if you can say a tabby wearing a bright green collar then at least that's an identifiable feature someone can spot.

On balance though I think it's not worth the risk of injuries.

I wouldn't. We bought one recently which pulls apart easily, and fixed it reasonably snugly. Poor kitty got it stuck in his mouth when he decided to remove it after 3 days of happily wearing it, and made his mouth bleed a bit. Lucky we were there and cut the bloody thing off. We just rely on the microchip now.

Ps he is also around 6 months.

Microchip, curfew cat flap, no collar, no going out after dusk :)

My two have been in this routine since kittenhood because I tried collars briefly, one got her paw stuck, the other one got her jaw stuck, and between that and the horror stories about them getting caught while climbing, I couldn't deal with the fear.

Night is when most road accidents happen to cats so it's not a bad thing to keep them in!

And please don't slowly strangle your cats with very tight collars 😭

www.kittycollars.co.uk/personalised-cat-collars/

I got my cat one from here as I live in a city centre and was worried about her getting trapped in a neighbours house when the neighbours don't really know me (people come and go round here)... now I'm worried about her wearing it having read this! She doesn't seem to mind it but I take it off at night when she's shut in so she doesn't feel claustrophobic. Are they really so dangerous??

I agree with using breakaway collars that have elastic as well.

I've bought so many kinds of collars and not been happy that the breakaway mechanism will work as intended, so have thrown them away. I finally found some that will break free without much pressure. As an added bonus, they're also reflective - our cats are both dark coloured and as they're both outdoor cats, I worry about them being hit by a car in the dark. (We keep them shut in at night, but sometimes they don't come inside until after dark).

Lastly, one of our cats went missing for 2 weeks last year and i finally found him several streets away, starving and injured. Having a collar means I can attach a GPS tracking device, which gives me a lot of peace of mind. He spooks easily, and I think something spooked or chased him and he ran.

Ultimately I'm not sure there really is a right or wrong decision, you know your cat best so I think you just need to weigh up the risks.

Mine is microchipped but has no collar. She stays in at night. I adopted her from the RSPCA and they recommended that cats wear a collar but I don't agree. I adopted my previous cat from Cats Protection and they recommend no collar.
My verdict is microchip but no collar

No collar here. She’s in overnight, very visible being pure white, and tends to be either in our or our immediate neighbours’ gardens.

We had her chipped immediately we got her.