Setting The Universe To Rights

[poliphilo]

But it's design fault that can be rectified- at least locally- by the application of a collar with a bell on it. We're ordering one online. It's ever so cute. It's decorated with a skull and crossbones motif.

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

How to you expect it to patrol the house and catch mice if it has a collar with a bell on it? Or is it only for exterior wear?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Exactly, I think we'll only put the collar on when he goes out.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Collars are great for indoor cats. Not so much for kitties that go outdoors, they can get caught on branches and other things and the cat can strangle. A breakaway collar is the best idea.

And I speak as a cat companion of many many years.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think this collar has a release mechanism for when it snags on something.

[dadi.livejournal.com]

Usually not very efficient. The collar must be large enough or have an easy breaking point in order not to risk a strangled cat (they squeeze through places habitually where collars get very easily entangled). And any cat worth its name usually realizes very very fast how to get rid of the annoying thing around its neck :D.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We had a cat who used to drop her collar at our feet as if it were prey. In the end we stopped putting it on her.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

What everybody else said...it can be a death trap for a cat that goes outside.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But it's good news for shrews.

No, I believe this collar we're buying has a self release mechanism.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

A body harness is good (like a second collar fitting around the body behind the front legs, connected to the front collar by straps). When our cat was eating the neighbor's kittens, we put her on a chain with a body harness whenever she wanted to go outside. Once she pulled the stake out of the ground, climbed a tree, tangled the chain in the branches, and fell. When we came to rescue her, she was comfortably swinging from the end of the chain, maneuvering herself so she could swat at birds.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

Yes. What everyone else said. What pondhopper said. I thought his job was to catch mice?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Mice not shrews.

I know, I'm not being at all consistent.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

Cat's have no idea of the difference.

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

I expect that, after a while, the presence of a cat will probably be enough to stop mice etc. taking up residence anyway.

[craftyailz.livejournal.com]

The size of this cat he wouldn't fit through narrow spaces, plus I've ordered one which has a break safe and is elastic - see how long it lasts before he comes home without it. Or it may not fit around his fat neck!!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's the basic idea. We don't particularly want him to kill them, just warn them off.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I am probably a bad person and will spend my next very short life being chased around by a homicidal feline, but cats catching things just seems to me to be the natural order of things.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's the natural order I'm objecting to. :)

[jfs.livejournal.com]

My 12 year old cat has a collar with a bell on and he's always been an outdoor cat. He still catches the occasional mouse but mainly they stay far away. Never had a mouse problem in either of the two Victorian houses he's lived in.

[w. lotus (from livejournal.com)]

"Curses! Foiled again!" quoth the cat. :-)

I want to see pictures of the hunter wannabe in the collar.