ID Collars for Cats
hi all. i’m the cat coordinator for my local animal shelter and we’ve run into an issue with collars lately and i was hoping to get some ideas of what other shelters are using!
we currently use stretchy fabric collars with a tightener. the collars have a plastic piece that ID number tags go on. our shelter has used them for over a decade but they’ve always been kind of a pain in the ass. they aren’t breakaway at all, and because they’re stretchy, even if you tighten them all the way on a tiny kitten, the kitten can still slip its leg through and get the collar stuck over a shoulder. and because they’re basically just a strip of stretchy fabric, cats chew the ends and get little strings loose and stuck in their teeth (or eat them) which is also quite bad. we’re supposed to burn the ends of the fabric with a lighter after cutting off the excess fabric to prevent this, but imagine holding a lighter an inch away from a cat’s face…
i’ve never seen any other shelters use this kind of collar but it’s been used by my shelter for so long that i’m not sure we could do anything else, but i’m really starting to get annoyed by them 😅 do yall use paper tags, buy breakaway collars in bulk, no collars, or something else? i just feel like i’m at my wits end with these stretchy fabric ones.