TabCat Pet Tracking Cat Collar Tracker System - Includes 2 Tags

I am not a paid reviewer so this review is 100% honest. I am a pet owner who loves her animals and did a ton of research about which tracker to buy for my cats so bearing that in mind, read on if you like.We live in a rural area and after 14 years with no problems, about a year ago, we lost both our cats the same night. After we got new kittens, we kept them inside for the first 9 months and then started letting them out during the day. As they got older, they were harder and harder to get find in the evenings (we have 2.5 acres with lots of places to hide) and after one stayed gone all night, I decided to invest in a tracker.Some things to consider. I elected to go with the radio tracker rather then the GPS tracker. My reasoning was that I am pretty sure the cats are fairly close by and I have an open and unobstructed area for the radio tracker to work. If you live in a city or you think your animal really wanders, you may want the GPS tracker. I was also worried that the 2G network used for the GPS trackers would become obsolete soon and I didn't want to pay the monthly fee. Again, I was pretty sure my cats were close by and I really just needed to find them and bring them indoors at night. I also picked this tracker because of its small size. The GPS trackers are quite large. Now for the specifics of this product.It arrived yesterday and I had zero problems with the set up. Be a little careful when you are taking off all the "stuff" they wrap it in, one of the trackers opened and I had to reinstall the battery. No big deal but I thought I'd broken it at first. The directions are easy to follow. I also didn't have any problems with the batteries that came with the product as others did. I have 2 cats and was able to quickly register the two devices with the base unit. The tracker goes easily onto the collar (my cats are not large, 7 or 8 pounds) and does not seem to bother them. Before I put the units on the cats, I hid the tracker around the house and practiced finding it.How it works: First, it works great but here are a few pointers. After you turn the base unit on you choose which tracker you want it to find. You need to give the unit a moment (maybe 3 seconds?) to orient itself and start looking. Second, going in a 360 degree circle at first is really important. This will allow the unit to pick up the radio tracker and move you in the right direction. If it doesn't pick up the tracker right away, walk about 25 feet and move in a 360 circle again until the base unit picks of the tracker. Once it picks up the tracker, you just follow the lights and sound. Like a good old fashioned game of "hotter/colder" in beeps more frantically and the lights turn green the closer you get to the target. It's pretty simple. The range has been great. I have been outside the house and found the cats inside the house. As I got near the back door, the unit seemed to suggest I was getting closer so I went inside and followed the directions and there was the cat in the back bedroom.The first night I went to get the cats inside I had no idea where they were. I turned on the unit and just followed it. There was the cat, lurking under some bushes near the back of the property staring at me but I'd never have seen her if I was just calling. After finding her, I hit the button "assigned" to her tracker to let the unit know I was done. The, I hit the button assigned to the other tracker and start the search for cat #2. Again, give the base unit a moment to reset itself (3 to 5 seconds) then it will start looking for the other unit. Found cat #2 in minutes and everyone was in for the night.About the volume. If you want to hear the tracker on the cats collar beeping, you need to turn off the volume on the base set and just follow the lights. The base unit makes too much noise for you to hear the tracker beep. However, the tracker doesn't beep that loud so unless you are pretty close, you won't here it. I keep the volume on until the base unit is going crazy and I am clearly very close. If I don't see the cat at that point, I turn the volume on the base unit off and listen for the beeping on the collar unit. This is useful if it's dark outside.Bottom line, this unit does everything I want. I just needed a simple device to help me locate the cats in the evening or whenever I wanted to bring them in. I felt most of the time they were nearby but because our area is rural, they could easily hunker down and hide (and just ignore my calls because you know, they're cats) making them hard to find. This unit is perfect for that and has worked flawlessly from the moment I took it out of the box.

Overall I’m very happy with this little device. I think it's a great product at a reasonable price, and it works as advertised.We live on four acres and my neighbor has a 20 acre horse farm. My cat is bold and tends to wander, sometimes rather far. After a scare of her being missing for several hours (unusual for her), we decided to get some sort of locating device. We didn’t want to incur a monthly fee for a GPS tracker, and they tend to be large for a cat. This small device is not a problem for the cat to wear.I’ve been using the Tabcat for about 9 months, since May 2020. It has helped me locate my cat numerous times. She even seems to respond to the beeping noise that the handheld makes as I get closer to her. It takes a bit of practice and you will start learning typical places to search. She hides in tall grass and other spots and won’t come when I call. Typical cat, right. There is the range issue. I have four acres, and sometimes I have walked the perimeter of my property and not gotten a signal. This is worrisome and frustrating, but there are limits to the technology.Recently my cat came home without her collar and tag. I figured, well, it’s a radio collar, I should be able to find it. I walked the perimeter of my property and got a faint hit coming from the neighbor’s horse pasture that borders me. He said it was OK to search in there. I kept walking in the areas where I had seen my cat, but no luck. But, I followed the faint signal and it was getting stronger the closer I got to his house. I was thinking this must be a false hit, which can sometimes happen. I’ve seen this with a passing car. I figured something in their house was giving me the signal. Still, I kept following the signal. I had to hop a couple fences, but I did find the collar and tag fairly close to my neighbor’s house. It was probably about 1000 feet from my house. It had been outside for a couple days, even in the rain. I do have the silicone cover on it. My cat must have gotten in a fight with something, because she had a bite injury on her front leg that ended in a visit to the vet. She’s fine now.I have changed the battery in the handheld device once. The collar still has the original battery. I’m not sure how long they will last. I don’t need to use the Tabcat everyday; maybe once a week or so. Daily use would likely drain the battery sooner. She goes in and out all day and usually comes home. I will likely change them once a year or something, rather than have them fail. The CR2032 batteries are cheap enough, about a dollar each. Worth it.

We had a major scare with one of our kittens about a week or so ago. As it turns out, our "missing" indoor-only kitten had not left the house but we couldn't find her. Anyway, lesson learned. Get a tracker!In our area, cell service is spotty at best and non-existent most of the time. So we decided on RF trackers and settled on Tabcat. We received Tabcat on 20 Nov 2020. As of today, 23 Nov 2020, we have been pleased with the product. We have tested the search function multiple times and it has worked as advertised. A word of caution: as other folks here have said, the sleeves that house the product seem to be *quite* flimsy. By Sunday, 22 Nov, the sleeve that holds one of the trackers had already ripped (picture attached). We contacted Tabcat today to request replacement and are awaiting their response.Aside from that, and if you are not concerned about your kitty wandering too far from home (if at all) given the Tabcat advertised range, Tabcat seems to work just as promised. If your cat is hiding somewhere in your house, or near the house, you should be able to find him/her and save yourself the agony of thinking that they somehow escaped and are way out in the elements. Our cats adjusted to the tracker in no time at all; the product is light, not bulky. It fits easily on the collar and it is intuitive to use. If Tabcat can ever make the tracker the size of a dime instead of a quarter, that would be great! We can't comment on battery life just yet. Overall, we are pleased with Tabcat so far.We hope that Tabcat can improve the quality of the tracker housing sleeves and we look forward to Tabcat's prompt replacement of our all-too-quickly damaged sleeve.Update 2020-11-24: Tabcat has been in touch with us and they have kindly agreed to a courtesy replacement of the damaged sleeve. We are impressed and grateful for their responsiveness and accommodation of our request.

Well, I was skeptical that this would work but for the most part it has. The range can be a limiting factor but if you are willing to walk around you increase your chance of becoming in range and finding your kitty. I did this and located where our errant Siamese was heading off to. I did this numerous times to figure out the places he was frequenting. Unfortunately / fortunately, it even found him when days after having a run-in with some other critter outdoors, he didn't return and we eventually found him dead (owl or eagle got him, we believe). :-( Even though the token was beneath him, against the ground, we still were able to get a signal and well,... it's better than not knowing.I did believe that the range was slightly extended by the thin wire ("wire wrap" type wire) that I heat-shrunk to the circumference of his collar, as someone else's detailed review mentioned. In theory, it is likely that it would capacitively-couple to the antenna inside.. I've been using both of the locator tokens with our remaining two cats without the kludged "collar wire" and in random testing I've found that perhaps it was just been my imagination that the wire increased the range. Some day when the weather permits I hope to do a methodical test at the park to better determine that. Fortunately the other two cats don't stray far from home (they seem to realize what happened to the Siamese). They are savvy about going out and they are gray and don't resemble a bunny like poor "Kukui".As for any issues that folks might have with replacement BATTERIES, aside from making sure that they are fresh and not expired... I can say two things:1) Same as the batteries that came with the unit, my replacement ones lasted for many months.! I finally wore the one in the hand-held receiver out searching all night for Kukui. The collars are seem to run for many months assuming that you aren't hunting your cats down every day. Whoever designed this was pretty intelligent and the collars expend very little power waiting to receive a signal from the hand-held locator unit. Once that is obtained they go into the more power hungry transmit mode so that, instead, their signal can be hunted down. Ham radio operators have a name for searching for a hidden transmitter. It's called "fox hunting" and works on similar direction and signal strength hunting along with the hunters skill. You can and will be doing the same.!2) WHEN YOU CHANGE THE BATTERIES WEAR THIN GLOVES SO YOU DON'T GET ANY SKIN OILS OR DIRT OF ANY KIND ON THE BATTERY! People are ignorant of the fact that it takes almost no oily finger residue between the very narrow positive & negative electrical connections of these hearing-aid / watch type batteries to cause a current to flow (continuously) at a higher average rate than the electronics that they had hoped to keep powered. The dirt can also prevent a good current path between the terminals of the battery and the electrodes of the device. And DON'T SHORT OUT the batter even momentarily while installing them. Never use metal tweezers because you ARE going to short positive to negative. Shorting the battery, even briefly is a big No-No that will shorten the battery's life considerably.Ask a knowledgeable electronics engineer and they out to concur with these facts. Hopefully now you've been "brought up to speed".I hope that you keep your kitties safe and when they do make you wonder that you find them alright with this fine product. It isn't purrrfect, but if once you figure out things like the need to keep turning it back on while hunting for more than the auto-shutoff period... well you should have lots of success locating your cat(s).

I purchased the original Loc8tor 10 years ago. When my new Covid kittens wanted to venture around our back yard, I decided to get a new tracker system. The GPS units seemed too heavy for our 9 month old kittens, who weigh 9.5lbs and 11lbs. I bought this unit.Comments on the tags:On the plus side, the tags are small--but they are bigger than the previous model -- see the photo with the old tag on the right. The 2032 batteries needed replacing after a couple months, which is roughly how long the old ones lasted. The rubber/urethane cover that holds the tag to the collar is easy to use and to insert the tag inside and pass the collar through. But it has already torn after a couple months-- see the second photo.Comments on the handheld device:The previous device was the size of a deck of cards and the new one is the size of a thick credit card. With new batteries in the tag, the new TabCat is good for about 100 feet in a straight line. The old one could detect at 150 feet. But the user interface on the new one is horrid. An 20-char LCD display would have been so helpful during the setup process. If the tag is out of range when you first start the search, the process and feedback is terrible. Since I have two cats, I use two of the buttons. After the initial beep upon starting a search, an LED occasionally flashes--does this mean it is still searching, or that it has timed out? And which tag is it searching for? The power on button is the same as the power off button. If you are out in sunlight, it is hard to be sure the unit is even on. I would have paid an extra $25 for a better user interface.My advice to the designer: number the buttons legibly, instead of the raised Braille dots. Make a separate on and off button. Use a bright and steady power LED, when the unit is ON. Put in a small LCD screen to indicate "Searching #" or "Not Found".

We've been a multi-cat family for almost four decades, and during that time the most frustrating thing has been to try to find all of the little monsters when we need to. Cats are very independent creatures, and can fit into the smallest places. Our house isn't that big, but there are literally dozens of hiding spots our 3 cats have used over the years, and each new cat seems to find a different set of them.After one of our kittens got loose before he got chipped (thankfully found after a week searching), we realized we needed a way to ensure we could locate them in emergencies. After looking at all of the different options, I figured we'd start with this one and see if it would work for us.And for us, this is a great product. While the cats rarely get to go outside, just trying to find them in our house and on the large porch used to take 15-20 minutes in the past. Now that each cat has their own TabCat on their collar, we can locate them usually within a minute or less. The combination of the signal beep on their collar, along with the green lights on the tracker getting taller as we get closer, has allowed us to do a quick "kitty count" any time we want. And because we give the cats a treat every time we use the TabCat, they often come running to look for us and get their treat when they hear the beep.The batteries have worked for several months at a time on both the controller and the pet tabs. The main thing we could use is a way to purchase more rubber tab holders, as they tend to rip a bit over time. But that's a small annoyance if that.As for finding the cats when they get out of the house, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Between the chip, their collars, and the TabCat, at least we have a great head start on locating them should they get out.So my advice is to temper your expectations on what you expect from this. Do your cats often run away from home? A more expensive option is probably right for you. Do you want to know where in the dang house the cat(s) went? This product is for you.

I would love to write a five star review for TabCat. It does get a five star for the two times it works before it unregisters itself and has to be re-registered to work again about twice.Here's the good part: Our cat quickly learned to associate the beeping tab on his collar with getting treats, so comes running once the collar tab starts beeping. He even comes when he can hear the handset beeping (when his collar tab is NOT working), so that is fantastic! However, if he is far enough away and cannot hear the handset and the collar tab doesn't beep, well, nothing happens. Which is most of the time.The bad part: As far as I can figure out, the tags (I am on the second set of two) unregister themselves at a whim. After re registering, they work about twice. Since you can never tell when they are going to quit, it will probably mean an endless routine of resetting at least every day to even have it be somewhat reliable. I'm going to set up two collars with a tab on each and just exchange the collar every day to keep moderately sure that the one he is wearing works. Our cat has lost two via his breakaway collar. We were able to find one using the directional signal from the collar tag. The second one we never found, highly likely because the collar tab had quit.(The manual doesn't have any kind of troubleshooting section and I couldn't find anything online that helped EXCEPT the comments here, some of which mentioned the unregistering problem. The cue for me is that the handset does not go into its rapid blinking search mode, but instead does a high and a low beep, then stops. If yours does this, try the unregistering and then reregistering routine.)The sort of good part: I purchased through Lowest Price Online and they were very cooperative about returning one set and leaving it open to return the second if it quit or I got disgusted.Another bad part: The price -- essentially $50 each for tabs that may or may not work, and no way to get extra/replacement tags if one quits working or gets lost except to buy a whole new set. Very expensive for such a faulty product. But when a pet is missing...well, we pet lovers would pay anything for some peace of mind.Edit: After more fiddling, I've figured out that the tab does not hold the battery in place. The only way ours works reliably is while the tab disc is being squeezed, which of course won't happen when it is on a cat collar.

Great low tech way to hunt your cats down. I am using them on two of my cats and they work ok. I had one that was defective and quit working, but the company responded well and replaced it for me. Be aware, these are quite large, and you need to be careful if you have a younger cat that might chew on their collar. My older cat does fine with it, but being only 4 pounds, it is really big on her. For my younger cat, we had to take it out of the cover (normally the collar slides through this rubber cover) and run a wire through the hole and hang it on his collar. He nearly choked to death when it went through his collar because he somehow got it wedged in his mouth like a gag. Scared us to death. We thought he would learn and it would be ok, unfortunately, he is not a bright cat and so we had to resort to hanging it from the wire. We are in a rural location, with a lot of acreage, so sometimes I have to wander a while before it will pick up their signal. The remote turns off fairly quickly, so you have to keep resetting it, which is annoying. Because of the size and the issues with the remote, I knocked a star off. I would not use this with a kitten, or young cat, unless you use a harness on them. I will be ordering more for our other two cats because it is the best option for where we live. Just realize these are really low tech, simple devices and the quality isn't great. The company was responsive and did replace the defective one when we let them know. The rubber holders for them are thin and wear easily, so we take the collars off when they are home, to help prevent wear and tear. I do wish the rubber protector had a built in ring, so you could hang it from the collar, rather than thread the collar through. We had to do this in a make-shift way, but we couldn't risk Teddy choking on it again, especially if we weren't around.