Our sweet Rusty was born in a pile of used tires to a single mom who lived life outside 100% of the time. She abandoned her kids on day one... Akin to leaving them at the fire station, she left them outside the home of our friends and thankfully they found the litter and raised them inside.
While he never learned "feralness" from a parent, somehow the force was strong with this one and from day one Rusty yearned to run free outside our house. He pushed through the dog-door, jumped the fence and made all our neighbors properties, his territory.
Most days, Rusty comes back inside of his own volition. He is not super keen on wind, wet or cold so 3 seasons out of 4, getting him inside at night is just no issue.
Then summer rolled around. The nights were balmy, the moon was full. Outside, a raccoon beckoned and bugs enticed. Rusty was determined not to come inside and made gallant efforts to evade capture.
There came a point where I realized that he had now stayed outside ALL night 4 nights in the last 2 weeks and I was super stressed about it. It was time for plan B.
Mark and I spent a bunch of time online doing research and viewing YouTube videos and narrowed it down to 2 viable options. We went with TRACTIVE.
Tractive is a GPS tracker about 3" long that is held in a silicon sleeve and threaded onto the cat's collar. The tracker feeds info about Rusty's whereabouts back to the app on my phone.
I'm able to see:
History - the tracks taken in the last 24 hours.
A heat signature type overlay that shows where he spends most of his time.
Activity - Active minutes just like my Fitbit!
It has a few features that I have grown to love also.
1. If he leaves the "home" area or safe zone I get alerted. Same when he returns.
2. If he is in wifi vicinity the collar goes into power saving mode.
3. If he is outside the safe zone but close to the phone, I can use bluetooth to narrow down the search.
4. I can use sound or light on the collar to help pinpoint its exact location outside the safe zone.
So how does Rusty like it? Actually he doesn't seem to mind at all despite its clunky size!
Can he remove it? In theory yes. His collar is the 'breakaway' type. When put under enough pressure, the clasp will come undone. And that brings me to the next part of my story...
The other day I was visiting with Rusty on the porch around midday. Later that evening, when there had been no sign of him for hours, I decided to track him. That's when I discovered that his History showed he had been 500+' from the house ALL day... like since 8am. The only way that made sense was if he had pulled off his tracker before I saw him on the porch!
I knew the best chance of finding the tracker was to go in search for it immediately... before the battery ran low. 10 minutes later I found myself sneaking around other people's front yards getting closer and closer to where the map showed the tracker.
At one point I even found another cat's collar, discarded beside a driveway. Hmmm... a cat altercation where they snagged each other and broke away both collars?
I activated the 'sound' feature and heard a TINY little melody somewhere nearby. Under a car? Yep! Centered under the car parked in this driveway I could spy the collar - sans cat. And one belly crawl later, I was able to reach that collar before brushing all the gravel back off my body and heading home.
Rusty showed up an hour later, unfazed at having lost his $50 collar. By that time it was recharged and he let me click it back into place around his neck without a fuss.
The things we do for our pets!!! (Or our peace of mind)
