cat GPS tracker

[Trustmeimadoctor]

So ours went out for the first time yesterday than vanished for 12 hours (straight from refusing to go out the door to teenager refusing to call home). we found her meowing in a neighbours garden seemingly a bit lost.

Has anyone used a GPS tracker on a cat so we can at least tell if she is stuck in a shed etc

Cheers

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Anyone?

[paintman]

Probably worth doing a search.

IIRC those that have tried them have had mixed results, some being fine & some having to look for the gps device in whatever location the cat has managed to get rid of it in.

[AdamT]

Forget GPS trackers, I found they never worked very well (not accurate), were heavy and had limited battery. Ultimately if your cat does get lost it will be in your general area so we use a Tile pro which works on Bluetooth, which have been really good. You can attach it to their collar and doesnt worry our boys. Range is good, approx. 75m or so. The other thing is when you search for the Tile Pro it will make a ringing sound when in range. I trained our boys to realise this was the sound of getting treats, so no matter where they were they come galloping to me.

[smack]

My dad got a GPS with 3/4G collar for their cat, as their neighbours complained the cat was stealing their pet's food, killing the native birds they were feeding on their deck, dad caught the cat a few blocks away from the house, and he goes off into the parkland/forest next door that has poisonous snakes.

The collar is a little bulky, but the cat is used to it doesn't seem to bother him. It is charged via usb, which lasts for 3 or 4 days from memory, and gets taken off when he is in for the night - where they live cats and dogs need to be licenced, so they need to have a collar with the licence tag to be outside anyhow. The tracking updates on a website every 5 mins or something like that, but the accuracy is usually 30-50m if he is cutting though houses when the satellite reception is limited, and it does give glitchy locations a mile away when he is under houses, but as the website gives a tracklog, so you can have a good guess where he is. When out in the open it is accurate to within 3m, which was handy when he didn't come home for dinner, and his position wasn't moving from in the parkland. When dad went out to find him as it was getting dark, the idiot cat managed to get himself stuck up a tree, so it has proved to be useful.

[Boom78]

I’d like to GPS and track one of my cats, not because I’m worried about him, just curious about what the f*** he gets up to for 20 hours of the day! Goes proper AWOL. Other cat never really leaves the garden

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Yeah they all do seem quite bulky but quite light between 25 and 35g

Previous cat wasn't an issue stayed within 100m I'd say usually way less

But this one just vanished and she doesn't seem very wise she wasn't going a bit further and finding her way back

She just set off and vanished she doesn't seem to respond to her name very well, previous one even from an early age would come when called and previous cat never stayed out that long so I did start to panic I went from not seen her in a while to she is in a shed or run over

[Simpo Two]

There was a TV programme about 10 years ago where researchers put trackers on all the cats in an area and then traced all their routes/times on a monitor, with a different colour for each cat. So it's not new, but I can't tell you what gear they used.

[DKL]

The simplest solution is Loc8tor. It uses radio not gps but needs no subscription.
Ours works over line of sight at about 100m but significantly less with obstacles but as you are moving with the handset it is usually easy enough to pin down the target (usually a lost collar to be fair).
I'd upgrade to a gps one but I have yet to find one with small enough tags that seemt o work markedly better than what we have.
Tile wouldn't work here is it's all fields behind so out of range of bluetooth.

[Simpo Two]

DKL said:

The simplest solution is Loc8tor. It uses radio not gps but needs no subscription.

Leads to https://mytabcat.com/

[DKL]

Simpo Two said:

DKL said:

The simplest solution is Loc8tor. It uses radio not gps but needs no subscription.

Leads to https://mytabcat.com/

So it does but it's exactly the same product, just a rebrand I suppose.
Interestingly the image of the collar attachment is the "old" version. I never liked the newer one. It's larger and round and takes 2032 batteries not the older smaller ones which lasted better. Clearly they have gone back to the original design.

[Willber]

Would an Apple Air Tag on the collar work?

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Not for me no, no apple devices

[snuffy]

I've tried two trackers, 3 or 4 years ago now.

https://new.pawtrack.com/shop

and

https://tractive.com/

Pawtrack was rubbish. One minute it said our cat was somewhere, the next it was a mile away, then back again. Then it came off and we could not track it to where ever it was. The tracking was all over the place, jumping around. Then the battery went flat so then we had even less hope.

Tractive was way better. For example, I put it on my wrist, walked around 5 miles, came home and looked at the log and it was spot on the route I'd walked. And it was fascinating to look in the morning to see where she'd roamed around during the night.

But, we gave up with the Tractive as well because:

Battery life if not that great; so you either need a spare battery to swap out or go a few hours without the collar on whilst it charges up. Also, either way, you are constantly (daily) having to take the collar on and off.

But the biggest issue we had was undue worry; we'd end up constantly looking at her location, and if it said she was by the main road say, I'd be off to try and find her, and sometimes I would, and sometimes I'd not. Also, at the time, she was going out for hours on end (now she's a few years older, that rarely happens), and when that happened, I'd be on my phone, forever concerned at how long she'd been out.

So, in conclusion, instead of providing reassure, it actually ended up causing stress and worry; cat location anxiety !

I think the second one was used for 2 or 3 months out of the first year's subscription fee, we stopped using it and binned it.

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Thanks for all the feedback
Since her disappearance she has been really good and pretty much not left the garden

[Simpo Two]

Trustmeimadoctor said:

Thanks for all the feedback
Since her disappearance she has been really good and pretty much not left the garden

Could be because:

Trustmeimadoctor said:

So ours went out for the first time yesterday

If she'd never been out before she doesn't know the area and probably wandered a bit too far then got lost.

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Yeah very likely, previous cat started small and got larger but she really never went far at all or stayed out too long. This one just went poof and vanished

She isn't the smartest though