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Looking forward to getting a cat soon. Any good GPS Tracking modules?
Posted by bigfoot22 on 06 Dec, 2022 17:44 -
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Just feed a cat and it will always return. A cat is not cattle; you don't need to track a cat.
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If you must, just get an Apple AirTag. I believe they work with white cats too.
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I use tractive with my dog. So far i've been pleased with it, but you have to recharge it frequently if you don't have good coverage and wifi (frequently: every 2 or 3 days when i'm outdoor, running 24/7)
They also make a version for cats. Don't know the difference -
Anything cellular is going to need recharging pretty regularly
I think an airtag will do what you need if you already have an apple product to use it with.
Presume this is just in case it escapes your home? Cats really shouldn't be roaming free
Context for those in other parts of the world: News Article
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Presume this is just in case it escapes your home? Cats really shouldn't be roaming free
Utter nonsense. If you live in a country where cats aren't allowed to roam free, don't get a cat. Cats go crazy when locked inside a home; they are not made for it. It is like keeping a gold fish in a tiny round bowl. -
If its all about the preservation of wild life maybe mankind should be confined indoors
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Presume this is just in case it escapes your home? Cats really shouldn't be roaming free
Utter nonsense. If you live in a country where cats aren't allowed to roam free, don't get a cat. Cats go crazy when locked inside a home; they are not made for it. It is like keeping a gold fish in a tiny round bowl.
It depends on the house. My house is rather large, and the cat has well over 100 feet to zoom around. He seems pretty happy. My old cat (R.I.P.) was a stray feral cat that I "domesticated", and was an indoor/outdoor cat. He had "street smarts" (nature smarts?) and could handle the dangers outdoors. I live in rural Nevada, and have both a red-tailed hawk and a great horned owl living on my property (big birds that eat mammals). Coyotes are frequently around. My current cat was an indoor cat given to me by a friend. He has been outdoors a few times, but I don't trust him to evade predators.
- John Atwood -
If its all about the preservation of wild life maybe mankind should be confined indoors
Studies in the NL show that the effect of domestic cats on wildlife is grossly exaggerated. A lot of birds are very well capable of deterring cats. You should see a bunch of Magpies deal with a cat that gets near their nesting tree. The cat won't make that mistake again for sure. And cats are not the only predators around. Foxes have always been there and nowadays we have wolves as well. -
Cats live up to 20 years and more. You will get tired very quickly charging the collar every day. As to a cat standing still waiting for the charge to complete - it is a fantasy.
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Just feed a cat and it will always return. A cat is not cattle; you don't need to track a cat.
Although they will usually return to where they’re loved and looked after well, it’s still nice to have the peace of mind of gps. -
Years ago, when I had a couple of Siamese cats, I used to round them up from their outdoor explorations by going outside and shaking some cat food kibble in a nice resonant cardboard box.
I’d stand on the porch, shake the box for 30 seconds, and within 5 minutes they’d individually appear. They had amazing hearing. I have no idea how far away they were, but sometimes they’d be close and appear immediately, other times it’d take a good 5 minutes. But it always worked.
If I were you, I’d be relying on the Pavlovian response rather than a technical solution. Cats like to nestle and hide, also: bad for GPS reception. -
I don't know how your cat's home range is like. I have cats since 1976. Between me and my wife, high was 4 cats of which 3 roams outside freely but home at night. Being in the USA, the areas that my cats frequented is likely different than you down under.
I do not think GPS would work so well. Apart from the GPS device that your cat has to wear, you need a receiver that can receive the GPS signal send by your cat and translate that to useful information very quickly. Pretty much like what Apple's airtag can do by pointing at the direction where your cat is (preferably with distance). If you have to enter the raw GPS info into a map (both your's and the cat's GPS coordinations), your cat could move a lot faster than you can enter the latest set of GPS coordinates into your map. You could be running around in circles. So the translation into useful information must be reasonably fast. Your DIY will have to deal with both the hardware and the software to do a useful job.
Apple's airtag and FI Collar seem to do that job (present useful info quick). But each with their own short comings.
From my experience (again, my area may be very different than yours), once the cat knows your home is his/her home, they would indeed come back. It is when quick-approaching storm, accident, and other unexpected events that causes problem. Other times are when we must lock up to go somewhere and must leaving the cat out until we are home. It appears to me that when the cat wants to come home but can't, that is when the cat may venture farther and do the less safe things. We lost one cat (car hit) and almost lost another one (locked in a basement near by) both were when we had unexpected absence. Otherwise, they each have their own routines.
Personally, I would have liked a (garage door opener type) remote activated blinking LED (at a position that doesn't disrupt the cat's own vision). Even a constant-on blinking LED would not be bad, I can think of a few occasions that a blinking LED on the cat would have been very helpful in finding the cat. Added bonus of a constant-on blinker is, it may help cars avoid the cat. My first cat had a close call (lost a tooth) with a car. My wife's first cat did not survive his encounter with a car.
By the way, if you love cats, you should see "A Street Cat Named Bob". An instant best seller when publish and made into a movie (starring Bob) - it is available in USA's youtube. It is about a recovering drug addict (author) adopted a young homeless street cat during very hard time for both. Both benefited. Bob died (hit by car) at age 14-ish (around 2019, there about) as a celebrity cat. There was a seating bench with his statue erected by donation from admirers -- "Every one deserves a second chance" is inscribed on the bench as they gave each other a second chance. -
Utter nonsense. If you live in a country where cats aren't allowed to roam free, don't get a cat. Cats go crazy when locked inside a home; they are not made for it. It is like keeping a gold fish in a tiny round bowl.
It depends greatly on the cat, they're as individual as people. I've had cats my whole life and some of them go crazy and try to bolt at every opportunity but others show no interest at all in going outside. I currently have four, the youngest is 16, none of them try to go out. One of them did bolt a couple of times and got out into the front garden years ago but it seemed to freak him out that there was no ceiling above him. He ran around the perimeter of the house huddling close to the wall under the overhang then came back in and never tried again. Now they just curl up on their heated pads or on my lap or perch on the sill of the front window and watch the world go by. -
A dog and cat were having an argument on who is the favourite of humans.
The dog says, "Humans like us more. They even named a tooth (canine) after us. Naming such an important body part after us shows that they like us more."
The cat smiles and says, "You are really not going to win this one you know." -
Just feed a cat and it will always return. A cat is not cattle; you don't need to track a cat.
Yep this^
Cats don't easily get lost. As long as they are brought up to know how to deal with the outdoors they can handle anything. They might go missing for a day or two, but once they are hungry they come back home for food. Also getting them castrated will keep them from going around as much and getting into fights. It becomes more of a problem if they figure out they can be nice to other people too and get even more food.
As for indoor only cats it depends on the cat. Not all handle it well. Also a lot of indoor cats can't handle the outdoors at all and might get stuck in the first tree they try to climb. The most important for indoor cats is to give them plenty forms of entertainment since they are missing out on a lot of outdoor stimulation and exercise.
Anything with GPS and 4G is going to be too big and heavy for a cat and need constant charging. Apple Airtags are indeed the best solution since it is small and low power while still being good enough to find your cat. They are not going to go far from home willingly. -
I have thought about taking the cat in the car with me and gradually training it to be used to travelling in a car out of a cage but it will take a while.
You can buy roller tops for fences, so that if your cat leaps onto the fence top, it rotates, & drops kitty on its bum!
Its also probably illegal to do so but people drive with dogs in their cars all of the time. I'm sick of dogs getting all of the attention around here. Got nothing against dogs its just that wish there was a park for other types of animals. On leash.
Its also weird to be walking with a cat on a leash but it might be what I have to do once a month to prevent it from going stir crazy.
Provided I get a place with a small backyard it should be able to stay in the back yard for a while provided the fence is covered in plastic bird deterrent spikes to prevent it from jumping up with heavy concrete pavers to prevent it from burrowing underneath the fence or probably some corrugated iron dug into the ground.
I doubt that your cat will dig under the fence-----that's more a "dog" thing!
Dogs will persist at a seemingly (to humans) impossible task, & by persistence, eventually get there.
Cats will say "@##*^%$$!! that!" & look for an easier way. -
Its also probably illegal to do so but people drive with dogs in their cars all of the time.
There are rules about that
Which i admitelly not follow all the time, though i would *never* let my dog on the front seat, if its paws are clean i will sometime let it stay on back seats instead of being in the trunk in the transport, he just loves getting the head out and catch the wind, even though that's dangerous in case of a sudden braking. I'm unsure about dog seatbelts in my juristiction so i never bought one of those
Re: animals on a leash, well.. Children Should be Kept on a Leash™
I've started seeing cats on a leash recently. At first it left me uneasy but only because i'm not used to it but hey, i get that. I'm a dog person i'd love to have my big black shepherd dog with me all the time, at the workplace, at the groceries, always gets me in a better mood.
Friend of mine travel with her two rabbits from time to time.
This summer I've found one tourist in the mountains with a bird cage in the form of a backpack. Truly bizzarre, but not the most bizarre thing i saw in the dolomites
There are probably many people who do not know who to trust with their animal for a week or two, i get that as well
but bird backpack..
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implanted animal electronics has been done before, the 1960s project Acoustic Kitty.
somehow I doubt 2023 Kitty needs its own GPS phone app. -
I don't think it is particulary weird. It is just that not all cats like strange new places. When I was a teenager we got a kitten and I took him for a walk around the neighbourhood on a leash (*) to get him acquainted with his new habitat. After a couple of weeks he could roam around freely (which soon let to becoming friends with another cat from the neighbourhood so we ended up with 2 cats). Anyway, your best bet is to make a cat used to walking on a leash with a harness in strange places from day 1 and see if your cat has a good time or not. Every cat is different.
Its also weird to be walking with a cat on a leash but it might be what I have to do once a month to prevent it from going stir crazy.
* With a harness that goes around the chest; not just the neck as cats consist of 90% fur and they easely escape a collar if they have to. -
We had a few Tractive collars but unfortunately due to their size the cat tends to lose them (they get caught on shrubs etc), and if they aren't pointing in the right direction when they fall off, you often can't get a GPS fix on the now lost collar. So a number of times I've gone out with an Android tablet running a Bluetooth scanning app in the area the tag last reported itself, and have managed to find it after about half an hour of searching in both cases by using the RSSI... After the third time, no luck, I suspect our cat lost it near the river and it got swept away. So we stopped putting it on her, it is a significant cost to replace them every few months. She always comes back, as another poster noted, if you feed them they will be loyal
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https://catmax.com.au/ or similar.
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Just feed a cat and it will always return. A cat is not cattle; you don't need to track a cat.
True, if they are ok.
Cats rarely get lost, unless some mafia cat attacks/chases them, then he might end in some remote area and/or hurt and not be able to return.
I lost a cat that way, we normally let him go to the outer windowsill, as we lived at the lower level, there was just ~6ft/2m to ground, so no risk of falling, in fact he ocassionally went away to see the world or try making friends with ferals.
Then a very huge black feral appeared, all cats flew away and he became the only one around.
My cat was a neutered male, so he didn't have any of the agressiveness, behaved like a big sweet kitty, so he went outside to salute him and got badly beaten, had to take some surgery because he got a deep bite at the base of the tail, got badly infected, was hard to detect with all that fur, until few days later a potato-sized lump appeared.
The vet said it had become necrosis, but it wasn't very extended so it looked like it could go well, but few days more and it would have extended to the spine, that would've been really bad.
Luckly he did great and healed in no time!
We didn't let him outside anymore, the poor thing cried all day wanting to outside.
Once we opened the windows for venting, accidentally left the door open without noticing, he probably took 2 nanoseconds to fly away and start smelling/watching everything.
Sadly that was the last time we saw him.
So yeah, a GPS tracker would have been be a great thing. Sadly not a common thing in 2003!
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To have an idea of where your cat may roam, watch this 50 minutes documentary. It is a study of what the cats do when they are out. The study was done in a town in Germany. A few cats were tagged with GPS and tracked by the researchers, analyzed, tried to understand and explain their movements.
You may find it as enjoyable as I did.