I’m really stuck with what we are supposed to do for the best for DCat. He’s 3, healthy, neutered and a very relaxed, affectionate boy when he is at home. We have two other DCats whom he gets on very well with.
HOWEVER, he’s a wonderer. For some unknown reason, over the past two years he has taken on a second territory about a mile and a half from home. He’ll be here for a week or two, and then bugger off up there. He very rarely comes home without us fetching him, and he can be gone for weeks on end if left to his own devices.
Shutting him in overnight has helped as he prefers to travel when traffic is quiet (it’s up country lanes and across fields) but he still slips off during the day every couple of weeks.
We have tried:
- GPS trackers - we have tried numerous but because the signal is poor and he is in and out of farm buildings, under cover of trees and bushes etc, they loose battery after a few hours, even on their most economical settings.
- Airtag - currently the best option we have at present. Doesn’t tell us exactly where he is, and he can go 24 hours without pinging but it means we can track him down when we go up to the farm, approximately half the time.
- A miniature smart phone - attached to a harness, with location sharing apps. Same problem with battery life and reliability.
- Leaving him to it - he can be gone for months and then gets riddled with worms and fleas and loses lots of weight. We’ve never left him that long on purpose but if he slips his collar, the situation is impossible because it’s such a big area.
At present, he has to wear a custom made harness with the AirTag attached because he’s lost so many collars and then been impossible to find. I don’t love it because obviously it’s an entrapment risk, but I can’t see what other choice we have.
The owners of one of the farms (there’s a few farms, stables and residential houses in one kilometer or so radius) have started being really pushy about us removing his harness because he ‘gets stuck’ (he might snag on a bramble but has always wiggled himself out fine). I have explained until I’m blue in the face that he gets very unwell if left to do his own thing, which is what they seem to think we should let him do. They are also clearly feeding him which doesn’t help. They were quite helpful to start with, calling when they saw him etc. but they have become much more confrontational recently. Everyone in that general area knows us and has been asked to call if they see him or can trap him.
When he’s home he’s the laziest, soppiest cat! He’s so happy to be here! It’s just that he seems to think he has two homes!
Shutting him in just isn’t achievable and he’d be miserable. He’s been kept in for weeks, up to a couple of months at a time, but he always reverts to the same pattern so unless we committed to him being a full time house cat (which he’d hate) it’s not a solution. For various boring practical reasons fencing our garden in isn’t logistically possible either. We’ve considered a buried perimeter fence with a static collar, but I’ve heard these aren’t particularly effective for cats and I worry it would just cause him to run off anyway.
Dows anyone have any suggestions?! I spend far too much of my mental energy trying to work this one out.