Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Always, always, always ... and then never again.
I always put collars on my cats. Because they are indoor/outdoor, I just feel like it's a smart move. People will see a cat with a collar and know it's not a stray, and they will check a collar for ID. I buy stretchy, breakaway collars, so that should one of the cats get "hung up", the collar will either stretch enough to pull over their head, or snap apart. I print my phone number on the collars, so that should they wander, there is an easy way for whoever finds them to contact me.
Until tonight.
Tonight, I got home from work, and discovered that Pony had somehow gotten "hung up" on his own collar. He had gotten his collar caught in his mouth, so that it was in effect acting like a horse bridle with a too-tight bit. I don't know how long it had been that way, but at that point I had been away from home for nine hours, and he had drooled and slobbered and at some point vomited and generally worked himself into a panic, trying to get that collar off.
I will tell you right now, this house smelled like cat fear.
As soon as I saw what had happened, I bent down and unsnapped the collar. I have no idea why it hadn't come off during his struggles; the elastic portion was still stretching, and the breakaway function was working as designed; it must have been something about the angle of the collar that prevented it from releasing.
That poor cat.
Of course, all of the other cats were upset, too, from watching Pony struggle.
Thankfully, Pony is alright. As soon as I got that got-dam collar off, he started to groom himself. Then he got himself a big old drink of water, and ate plenty of food, and just in general decompressed. Everybody decompressed; there's some heavy-duty cat-napping going on right now.
And I will never collar a cat again. After I made sure that Pony was okay, I took off Soda's collar. And then Tinks'. They are microchipped, so there is still a way to ID them. I simply can't take the risk of what happened today ever happening again.
Pony, I am so, so sorry for what happened today. You and your brudders are nudists now; try not to end up on any sketchy cat-porn websites, okay?
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6 comments:
urf, yeah. We had one nearly hang himself on a fence, despite the snapping device. Then they learned to chew them all off each other. Our cats are naked now. (But chipped.)
Well, I guess I need to get on the chipping wagon. I lose collars left and right because they come off so easily, or if I find one that seems sturdy, I keep it loose enough that Kira can just slip out of it, and then she slips out of it too easily and it's gone. But your story makes me want to take her collar off too. Poor Pony.
An experience similar to this led me to take the collars off my cats.
I also don't let them out. Ever.
I am sure that, eventually, Pony would have managed to get the collar off. But I don't ever want him to go through that again.
Kate, if you do decide to chip, make sure you ask around about pricing. The chips themselves only cost a few dollars apiece, but some vets are price-gouging and charging over a hundred dollars for the insertion, which takes about one second. And you might want to first call your local shelters and ask if they even scan for chips; around here, none of the shelters do, because they can't afford the equipment. I went ahead and chipped my cats anyway because I was able to get it done for next-to-nothing through one of the groups I volunteer with. Thankfully, my cats each have distinctive-enough features so that I would be able to visually ID them in a shelter. (If you have a cat that is visually similar to a lot of other cats, i.e., brown tabby, it's a good idea to make note of any distinguishing features (she has two black toe pads and three pink toe pads on her front right paw, etc.) so that you'd be able to pick her out from a crowd.)
Oops! Sorry for the dissertation. Gah.
and yeah, my cats used to go through collars like crazy; I often wondered where all those collars ended up, because I rarely found them out in the yard. I was picturing the cats yanking them off and flinging them into the woods.
Really sorry to hear that you (all) went through this. Things like this also happen to people with two-legged kids who aren't furry.....feeling sure that you are doing the best thing for them and then agonizing over accidents. I say you celebrate the happy outcome with dead mice all around!.............Ginny
Ginny, I think the cats started the celebration without me - I found a whole bunch of bird feathers (but no bird) in the hallway yesterday.
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