Cat welfare: collars and bells

Cat collars

Ribbons, bows and collars may look cute on cats, but are they safe or even in the best interests of the animal? Witness the following story. A young cat was acquired from a refuge and it was noticed immediately by the new owner that he cringed when touched around the neck. Now this little cat had had a chequered career and acquired a cat collar somewhere along the way that no one had bothered checking on for tightness. It was this that was causing the cringing, for the collar had lost its elasticity and had become irritatingly even dangerously snug, in fact was quite frayed from the cat’s constant efforts to get it off.

The moral of the story is - keep a close watch on the tightness of collars especially on growing cats. Do not rely on elasticity to save the day, because there is a limit to the amount of stretch possible before the material fails completely. Kittens grow very rapidly, so that a collar that is loose when first secured can become too tight within a couple of months. Another problem with elasticised collars is that they can still cause strangulation if they get twisted before the cat is able to get out of them. A solution is to use a breakaway-type collar, which has a safety buckle that should release when placed under tension, although failures reportedly occur.

Other horror stories regarding collars include cats getting a bottom jaw or tooth caught in them or even a leg, with very unfortunate consequences if no one is there to help the cat. The RSPCA in Armidale (Australia) rescued a cat with a collar caught around its middle - the cat had ghastly wounds as a result and was starving. Another though lesser problem is that some cats end up with so many tags on their collars that they find difficulty in resting their chin/neck comfortably on their paws, as they like to do. Of course there are the rodeo exhibitions as well, cats just don't like collars initially at least, and unless necessary for ID purposes would be happier without them. Reports are that cats take more kindly to very soft elasticised collars than any other type.

Bells on cat collars

Bells on cat collars are a useless affectation and may even cause psychological and behavioural problems at least in some cats, and yet it is quite difficult to buy a cat collar without one already attached. The original idea of belling cats has been around for centuries, in fact there is an Aesop’s fable about a council of mice deciding to bell the cat to warn them of its presence. This led to the saying, “It is easy to propose impossible remedies”, for even if one of the mice had been brave enough to bell the cat it would doubtfully have escaped with its life - and would the exercise have been worthwhile anyway?

A fact sheet put out by the Mammal Society but unfortunately no longer available on their website showed that putting bells on cats does not limit their hunting ability, in fact belled cats in one particular study caught more wildlife than their unbelled equivalents. Some reasons given were that belled cats learn to move even more stealthily, the bells are not loud enough to alert wildlife of danger anyway, and inertia holds the clanger stationary and therefore silent when the cat makes the final attacking leap. At least two other studies have highlighted that the belling of cats has no effect on number of birds caught. "The efficiency of fitting cats with bells is contentious. Barrette (1998), found that belling of cats has no significant effect on the amount of prey caught. The result of the longer study by Woods et al. shows that fewer mammals (mainly rodents) were killed and brought home by cats that were equipped with bells BUT bird capture rates were not affected. Bells may serve as a warning to rodents and other mammals of a predator's approach, but birds may rely largely on visual cues in predator avoidance behavior or they may not hear the bell due to its acoustic qualities (Woods et al.). Coleman et al. (1997) suggests that wild animals don't necessarily associate the ringing of the bell with danger and that some cats with bells on their collars learn to stalk their prey silently."
Refs:
Barrette D.G. (1998). Predation by house cats, Felis catus (L.), in Canberra, Australia, II. Factors affecting the amount of prey caught and estimates of the impact on wildlife. Wildlife Research. 25: 475-487.
Woods M., McDonald R.A. and Harris S. (2003). Predation of wildlife by domestic cats Felis catus in Great Britain. The Mammal Society.

Of considerable concern is the behavioural changes that bells may cause. They might sound innocuous to human ears but cats have more sensitive hearing and it is easy to understand how some could become deeply affected by a constant tinkling noise next to their ears every time they moved. Noise, even slight noise, has a cumulative effect in humans and this could well apply to other species as well. Reported problems caused by bells include cats repeatedly managing to get their collars off until the bells were removed; bottom jaws getting caught in collars for this reason (with a potentially disastrous outcome for the cat); another cat that exhibited depression and reluctance to move until the bell was removed; still another that would only creep about very slowly and even stopped eating until the bell was taken off the collar. And finally some truly sad stories about belled cats being killed by dogs alerted to their presence by the tinkling of the bell.

Birds and other prey are usually very much aware of the presence of a stalking cat, belled or unbelled. It has frequently been observed that birds will deliberately taunt cats, swooping at and screeching at them and not moving any great distance away, or by sitting out an attack that is obviously going to occur until the very last moment before flying out of harm's way. It is very much a "catch me if you can situation" and one has to wonder whether this is nature's way of ensuring that the prey/predator cycle continues. The silent approach is not the whole secret to being a successful predator; other factors are at work, some of which may be contributed by the prey itself.

As an adjunct to the preceding paragraph, some birds actively terrorise cats to the point of almost physically attacking them. Plovers certainly do this when nesting, making most cats run for their lives, also magpies, mynahs and choughs have been observed behaving similarly.