Cat tracking collars - GPS / Radio - your thoughts?

[BookWorm45]

Hello All

Our young tabby cat recently went AWOL and has now come home. I have decided we'll try one of the GPS / radio tracking collars.

Our cat is young, fairly slim neck / head, and very active - up and down fences etc. He has a cat door with a microchip recognition though I believe the GPS / radio collars are meant to not interfere with the cat door chip signal. So I wonder how well a collar will stay on. I've also seen a mixture of reviews so far for all brands.

Has anyone got any experience with:
PetTracer www.pettracer.co.uk/ (looks small and lightweight which could be good)
or
Tractive tractive.com/en/pd/gps-tracker-cat (looks fairly large around the cat's neck)
or
Any other brand that you've found works well for you ?

Your thoughts very welcome.

Plus obligatory pic:

Far as I'm aware, the GPS tracking collars only work if you / your device and pets are within a certain range of each other anyway so if you're looking to have a means of tracing his exact whereabouts at any given time, you could only rely on it and have his location pinned down if both of you are within range.

The other concern I'd have personally is with him wearing a large collar out and about roaming and doing his stuff and getting up to cat stuff. I am a bit precious about collars to be fair but I wouldn't like a collar that doesn't have a velcro or quick release. Most tracking collars I'm sure are tamper proof to prevent anyone looking to steal pets from esily getting it off in the first place which again worries me and means if it's caught on something accidentally you could find your kitty dangling from a garden gate or fence post 🙁

It might be as well to just get a collar with tags and your name / contact number on it so if he goes walkabout again or is rocking up to other houses telling lies and pretending he has no home to go to and nobody loves him - they at least know otherwise and are likely to give you a call.

I have tractive. Its very accurate in tracking my cat and you can see where they have been etc. It is a bit bulky, my cat is quite large however, but it doesn't bother him. It attaches to a normal quick release collar. He lost it once, so I had to go round neighbours and ask them to look for it. You can get one replacement per year if you can't retrieve it. Its also a bit pricey. £45 for the initial collar and then a subscription.

All in all, I am happy knowing where he is as once he went missing for a day (hence why I got it) and it would have been so much better if I had known where he was.

Photo of him with it on

You dont need to be in range of your cat sorry, it would track them anywhere. You can set boundaries on the app as well and it alerts you of your cat leaves them

We have Tractive, again after cat going AWOL.

Spent a brilliant day tracking cat all over the village then he seemed to go very quiet.

Bastard cat returned without collar, took him one day to figure out how to take it off. It was v easy to track the collar into a hedge though 😕

It’s a strangulation risk though, my Bengal was an absolute machine of a cat but he got his front leg & bottom fang caught in his snap release collar & limped in on 3 legs.

The vets on here always say don’t risk it.

We had a Weenect tracker for our cat for a while. They claim it is the smallest tracker around but it was still quite bulky on our smallish cat. We had it for a few months but in the end we gave up because she kept losing it (and the collar it was attached to) in places I couldn't retrieve it. I think it kept getting caught in bushes and I was worried it slowed her down when trying to run away from other cats or foxes. The few months we used it reassured us that she doesn't go too far and stays in back gardens and away from the road. I did get obsessed with checking the tracker all the time though and I worried each time the signal got lost for while (which happens frequently).
Since we stopped using the tracker she hasn't lost her collar a single time so it was definitely the tracker getting stuck on stuff.
I would prefer to know where she is at all times but I have accepted I have to let go. We keep her in at night to reduce the risk of her getting run over.

Another with a a Tractive, it doesn’t bother him at all. He’s a larger cat though, I think it would be too chunky for a dainty cat. His only issue is he can’t groom his back properly when it’s on, but it comes off at night so not a major issue.

As to the collar thing, we live near a local busybody who will claim collarless cats as stray and try to hand in to rescues. So he needs to wear one.
Excuse mylegs in shot!

Thanks all very much , the pics showing the cats wearing their Tractives were really helpful too.

I'll need to do a bit more thinking on this and also research the weenect one which I hadn't heard of.

Right now as our cat has only just come home after being missing for a few days, I don't want to think about anything which could put him in danger / get caught up on something / strangulation risk etc. However I also don't want to have another experience where we just don't know where he is !

My cats have Tail It trackers, the company are based in Norway but ship to other countries. It's a small device, it attaches to their usual collar and doesn't seem to bother them. It has a good battery life, Boycat once lost his for 5 days and it still had some juice left.

I actually have Apple AirTags on their collars as well on a special pet collar holder so they don't dangle, as GPS trackers only work if they have a line of sight to the sky. This is because one cat has a habit of climbing into open sheds/vehicles, and the other has a habit of losing his tracker in dense bushes where I can't get a location on it. So far this system works very well. Boycat loses his tracker about once a month but I've always managed to retrieve it, either via the GPS function or the Airtag.

I also bought and tested numerous safety release collars for both my cats. They actually have different ones, as I found that one cat needed a different "breaking strength" than the other. They are light reflective as well.

I previously tested the Pawtrack gps system which is inbuilt into the collar, but I was not happy that it would safely release, and the battery life was terrible.

Thanks everyone for your views, really appreciate it.

I've been doing a review of various brands and so far I am thinking about getting a Pet Tracer brand. Mainly because it's the only one I can find that has GPS plus also Radio frequencies. However it is pricey so I will think hard about this today.

That PetTracer tracker looks quite interesting, although it's very expensive!

I have been wondering if someone would create a GPS tracker like this that uses an additional technology which isn't reliant on line of sight. This is the reason I use the Airtag / GPS combo. I have to say, the two together work remarkably well - the Airtag is like a game of hot and cold so if I can't get a GPS signal I can use the last known location and from there I have always been able to track down the cat (or collar if it's come off!). I catch my cats at dusk and bring them inside for safety, so I am well practiced at tracking the dear little bastards down

Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts if you do buy the Pet Tracer OP. If you decide to try an Airtag, this is the holder I use on the collar, it's very sturdy: www.etsy.com/nz/listing/1009139496/airtag-dog-pet-collar-cat-holder-case

THanks Violet ! I will probably do an update back here in a bit once we get the collar and try it out.

I can well imagine that no matter what option we get, there's always the chance that our cat will somehow manage to ditch the collar...

It's definitely worth checking their T&Cs in terms of what happens if the collar goes missing, particularly where you are paying a monthly subscription fee for tracking. Some companies won't refund your subscription fee (so if you've paid for an annual subscription and now have no collar then too bad). Others will let you cancel or pause your subscription.

A quick update in case anyone is interested in the outcome for GPS / radio collar options.....

I bought the PetTracer option (it has radio tracking and GPS) and signed up for a year's sub. The collar also has an optional insert which makes it a smaller circumference. However I hadn't realised fully that my cat has a very small head / jaw - almost kitten size but on an adult body - and the result was that the collar was just too big for him, he was able to get it off. I think it would have been fine for a "normal" size adult cat.

So - we aren't continuing with PetTracer. However their customer service was superb, full refund given of the collar and the monthly sub. Also when we tried the collar ourselves (walking around outside the house while holding it on someone's hand) I could see that the software updated almost instantly to show the position, and was quite intuitive to use.

Hope that might be of some use.

@BookWorm45 Thanks for the update. That's useful to know, as the manufacturer of my cats' GPS collars has discontinued the product. One of my cats also has a particularly thin neck (despite being the same age and weight as her brother he has a chunkier neck). So that's helpful to know.

How did you get along? did you end up buying one of the trackers? We purchased both a pettracer and a tractive last week for our tabby and deciding which one we prefer.
The pet tracer is definitely the winner so far in terms of size, Im not sure im comfortable with the size of tractive its pretty big and bulky in one place.

I havent let the cat out with them yet so just gathering any opinions.
To be honest I dont mind paying more if I know is going to be a better option, we already spent a fortune on the little lady...

Hello @BeOpalShaker We never could find any tracker wich worked for our cat, due to him having quite a small head and neck which meant he could get all of them off.

Aww, ours also has a small head too but I got the inlay band for pettracer and fits nicely on her so maybe she is a little bigger.

We decided to give pet tracer a go as it is around 1/2 the size from Tractve and also the customer support has been phenomenal answering questions.

We let Missy out with it yesterday and today, she hasnt gone very far as it has been raining but battery is still almost full which Im very happy about as most reviews on other trackers say they only last a day and wasnt sure if Pettracer would last as long as they promise.

I think time will tell but I do feel a lot more relaxed knowing she is wearing a decent tracker.

We have a Tractive mini and have had no issues - their customer service is great too
Finlay has lost 2 in past year and they just charge postage for replacement - quick delivery too

This isn’t true at all. We have Tractive and you don’t need to be anywhere near the cat for it to work (I’ve tracked them from holiday before), plus the collars are quick release

Tractive are quick release and the GPS works anywhere in the world as previous poster said we track Finlay whilst on holiday
I try not to live track frequently though as it runs down battery quickly

This is incorrect. GPS works anywhere as long as they are outside. it wont work well if your cat is indoors, that's also one of the reasons why we stayed with pettracer as they have GPS and radio. they explain it well here: https://pettracer.com/pages/app-tech

Tractive only has Gps and the battery running out would drive me crazy and i know I would end up not charging it. It also was too big on our cat, she is very petite.

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but I just started using the pettracer today and I'm disappointed. I thought this was going to show me live gps if I wanted it, but it appears that the collar 'collects' gps signals and only returns them when it connects to the home station - which only happens via radio signal when they are within a few feet of the base. So i had no idea where my cat was for 2 hours, as the last point was in our garden, but then when she did eventually return home, i saw that she was a few gardens over.

I'm also a bit miffed that the collar is sitting on the windowsill charging right now, and the app shows that she's in next doors house!

Have I totally missed a setting, or is this working as designed?