collar and skittish cat

I just recently adopted a couple of (adult) cats, and I'd like to put collars and tags on them. So I bought collars and got tags with their names and my phone number.

One of my new cats, Harry, is pretty laid back and I got his collar on him with no problem. He didn't like it at first, trying to play with the tag hanging at this throat but he adjusted pretty quickly and I think he'll be fine with it.

The problem is with my other new cat, Misty. She's pretty skittish anyway and tends to run off, or at least scoot away by a few feet, whenever she for example hears a strange noise or if I move quickly in some way that she doesn't know what I'm doing, etc. So the problem is that whenever I walk towards her with the collar in my hand, she runs off, or at least out of reach.

Does anybody have any advice about how to get a collar on a skittish cat? Or should I just give up?

I've got them on the girls and after a couple of hours they were fine with them. Jack however wasn't. I tried several times with him and everytime he got hyper trying to get it off that it stressed him so much, so i've resigned myself to the fact that it's not worth putting him through anymore stress so he doesn't wear one.

Their all chipped anyway, but it was an added protection that i like them to have the collars on with my phone number.

I don't use collars on my cats. Most really don't like them. Ling got hers off almost all the time (she's black and the collar had a bell to tell where she was). She only wore the collar till she got over her desire to run out the door

If they are indoor only cats, I don't see any real reason to keep collars on them. Some say "well it's cause they might get out". I've had mixed/pedigree cats for a long long time and none of them ever got outside.

We keep collars on our cats most of the time because when we travel I want them to be used to wearing the collars. When we're home I give them breaks from wearing it for about 1 week our of the month, mostly to let their hair go back to normal there. Well, when I go to put them back on Ramsay does pretty much what you're describing. He takes off running. We usually just sneak up on him with it. One of us will pet him/distract him while the other grabs the collar, then we do a little "sneak attack". Once it's on, he's fine with it.

So I took the tag off the collar and wrote my phone number right on the collar itself with a laundry marker. It looks like Misty is afraid of the jangling of the tag on the collar, so I'm hoping without the jangle I'll be able to get the collar on her.

I also notice Misty doesn't seem to like things coming at her face. I had been trying to put the collar on over her head to make sure it would be able to slip off in case it got caught on anything, but that wasn't working, so I decided to stop trying to do it that way.

So I unlatched the collar, found a time when she was distracted, came up behind her, slipped the collar around her neck and clipped it back together.

So the collar is on now, and she doesn't seem to mind it being on. I've made sure I can slip 3 fingers underneath it, so hopefully it is loose enough to be able to pull off in case of an emergency.

And maybe someday I'll be able to get the tag on it.

If you can make sure your in the house with her all the time it's on just until she gets used to it. It is a break free one as well isn't it just incase her mouth gets caught in it