Do you know of a cat actually harmed by non-breakaway collar??

[Maui]

Is this concept about kitties getting hung up or killed by non-breakaway collars actually true or an urban myth? I'd like to hear from people who have actually had kitties harmed or know first hand of kitties who have been harmed.

I know that if you put a collar on too loosely, it gets caught around their lower jaw. This happened to my kitty when I was a new mom. I'm not talking about that sort of thing. I am talking about getting caught on a branch and hanging, or something much more serious.

Thank you!

PS This question came up on a board I admin for Lost Pet owners and I thought since there were so many more people here I could find more actual cases.

[tuxedokitties]

My Mom's cat Xerxes was hung on a fence by one...she went outside looking for him & found him hanging & almost dead. Fortunately he survived to get into all sorts of other trouble (minus his collar).

When I worked in the animal clinic I saw a couple of cats come in with the collars with the elastic inset caught up underneath their leg, cutting into their "armpit". We had to cut the collar off & clean up the wound around the neck & under the arm.

I use the safety breakaway collars & check them in the store to make sure the latch isn't too stiff...they vary greatly in how hard the latch is to open & you don't want a small cat getting stuck in one that her weight isn't sufficient to release. Or use the soft Beastie Band collar & make sure it's loose enough to slip over the head but too tight to get stuck under the arm.

[annabelle33]

When I was younger I got my cat, Cuddles, a pretty pink princessy collar.. Well.. We live on this farm road type place but kitty always stuck close by.. Except one day she was missing... we searched for her and found her stuck in probably an acre of very high weeds/brush/whatever, by her collar.. She wasn't hurt as in hung or anything, just very hungry because she'd been there a couple days.. UGH. So no more collars on my outdoor kitties!!

[hissy]

I have had emails from cat owners that would break your heart. I really doubt that the writers would have just have made up this stuff to become urban legends. One woman could not find her cat for days. The woman was quite elderly. Finally she got down on her hands and knees to look under the bed and found her cat hung there! The cat's collar had gotten hung up on a loose part of the bed frame and the cat could not shake it loose. Another email was of an outdoor kitty with a collar who went over an iron fence and got caught on one of the spikes. He hung there for quite awhile till found....I microchip all my cats, none will ever wear collars.

[TTMom]

Anything that can catch them by the neck, not just collars, is dangerous. My Mom had one of those toys that hang from the door frame by an elastic thread. Her cat loved that toy and would pull it all the way across the room and bat it about and flip around. One day my Mom and Dad came home and found the cat lying very still across the room at the end of the elastic thread. She had gotten the thread wrapped around her body several times and one time around her neck and she was barely breathing by the time they found her. My Dad carefully unwrapped her and they took her to the vet. She was fine because she had stopped struggling in time, if she had kept struggling she would have tightened the elastic so tight it would have completely cut off her airway.

We also had a neighbor whose dog hung himself on a regular collar. He was tied up and jumped over the fence and got stuck.

[Princess Purr]

i have never heard FIRST hand. Some random person did email me and tell me a horrible story trying to make me not want to sell collars...of course they didn't take the time to read that the collars seal with velcrow and the beaded ones just wrap around so they would pull right off.

I don't use non safe ones just because they make me really nervous.

[mzjazz2u]

I've don't have collars on my cats because they are inside only and so furry you wouldn't see a collar anyway. Plus they are microchipped (except Carmella and she will be done soon.) I tried putting a break away collar on Peaches when I first got her but she kept taking it off! So I gave up. It's sad to hear stories of kitties getting harmed because of the wrong type of collar.

[dougbug]

i have seen programs on t.v. about cats and collars, and there were stories about cats hanging themselves with nonbreakaway collars, so it must be true. i wouldnt take a chance with one myself

[moo]

I had a friend who had a big black cat called Mikey and he caught his collar on something – it looked as though someone had waxed two patches off from above his eyebrows where it had rubbed all the fur off his forehead – he was very lucky.

Other friends had a beautiful pure bred dog Sosai that they left at home while they went Christmas shopping, he tried to jump the fence and when they come home he had hung himself and was dead – devastating stuff.

So, the sad answer is yes, it can happen….

[hissy]

The biggest culprits are those dang flea collars, they are so thick nothing breaks them.

[Maui]

Moo, how terrible about the dog Sosai. . .

Thanks so much for sharing your stories. Looking at the stories, the majority have been scary but fortunately not fatal. And this board gets a HUGE amount of kitty aware traffic.The only first hand story fatality was Moo's friends's Sosai.

We (on the other bulletin board, kitty moms who have lost and found their indoor-only cats but only after a hell of a lot of hard work and misery) are trying to figure out a way of safe guarding our indoor-only kitties if they accidentally escape. Many indoor only cats — especially the timed ones — completely freak out after escaping then hunker down nearby, completely hidden. There is a remote beeper collar that you can put on a collar which can help you locate a kitty, but if the collar breaksaway, then the remote beeper isn't going to do us a lot of good. Microchipping cannot help in many situations because the animal doesn't show their body. . .it just stays hidden, gets thinner and thinner as the days go by. My kitty lost over a third of her weight and was down to 4.2 pounds when we finally trapped her in a humane trap. For cats in this category, I think there is probably a higher chance of dying of starvation or lack of water than getting hung up, given the actual first hand fatalities.

I will post a link to this thread on the other bulletin board. If anyone has any more first hand experience please feel DO free to add them on. It will help us make that decision.

[Kumbulu]

I have always put those stretchy collars on my cats(the ones where the whole collar is stretchy) or used break-away collars. Yes, one or two have come home 'naked' on occassion but I'm just glad they were able to disentangle themselves from whatever they were caught on, because of their collars. I figure, what's another $6 for the tag and a little more for a new disk when it could have been my cat's life?