Loc8tor Tabcat Cat Tracker – Wireless Kitten Pet Collar Tracking Device, More accurate than GPS

My blind cat loves to spend her days outside in our large garden. I check where she is every 20 to 30 minutes, but it was sometimes taking me a (stressful!) 30 minutes or more to find her playing in the undergrowth or sitting up a tree. I got the Tabcat to solve this problem, and now I can find her easily and quickly - a huge relief! Also, when I was away for a week it was reassuring to know that my petsitter could easily find and check on her anytime.THE COLLAR TAGThe collar tag is a little bigger than a bottle cap, 3cm diameter, 5mm thick and very light at only 9.5 grams with the silicon cover on. You can attach it to the collar by putting a lanyard/small cable-tie/string through the hole in the tag. Or, you can slip the tag into its splash-proof silicon cover and thread that onto the collar. I'm using the silicon cover, but the initial downside was, because my cat wasn't used to wearing a collar, she fought it and got the tag in her mouth several times. She could hold it in her teeth because of the soft cover. I’m not a fan of silicon covers for this reason. My solution was to cut and re-stitch the collar, cutting out any excess fabric, so it fits her better and is lighter and less noticeable to her. She ignores the collar and tag now and wears it all the time.She's a small cat, but strong, weighing 3.8 kg, and in terms of size/weight, the tag is no problem for her to carry, she still leaps about after insects as normal. I'm using a quick-release safety collar (so it will come off if she gets snagged), and the tag is perfectly compatible with this.THE LOCATOR HANDSETThe second part of the Tabcat kit is the handheld locator. This is a small, light, simple device. It looks like a wafer-thin calculator but with far fewer buttons. Press the "On" button on the side, then press one of four channel buttons on the front, then follow the increasing beeps/flashing lights to find your cat. There's one other button to adjust the volume of the beeps.I assigned my cat's tag to channel 1 (a quick and simple process which the instructions explain). There are 3 other channel buttons, so you can use the same handset to locate up to 4 tags on 4 different pets. The set comes with 2 collar tags, 2 waterproof silicon covers, and the handheld locator – so you can immediately start locating up to 2 pets.You can buy 2 extra tags if you want. The handheld locator is small, light and has a hole for a lanyard so you can keep it around your neck - but it doesn't come with a lanyard string, so you might want to get one. To me the locator is so small and discrete that it could be easily lost.Both the tag and handheld locator have CR2032 button batteries installed. You can replace them if they run out, so you might want to get some spares. I haven't used this long enough to know how long the batteries last.RANGEThe range is good, and only interrupted between the garden and the paddock when I get close to a thick stone barn wall, but once I go around the corner it picks her signal up again. The garden / paddock is roughly 100 metres long, and up to 50 metres at its widest so the Tabcat can easily cope with the whole area (It operates on radio frequency and can pick up your pet’s signal once they are within around 122 metres of you – according to the documentation).HOW I USE IT TO FIND MY CATEssentially, I go in the garden, point the locator in different directions until it picks up her signal (the beeping indicates when I have pointed it in the right direction) and then I follow that direction and the beeps and lights go up and down depending on whether I am going in the right direction towards her or not. When she hears the beeps, she actually comes to meet me now.TABCAT OR GPS COLLAR?I was undecided whether to get the Tabcat or a more sophisticated GPS tracking collar. I ended up getting both to see what suited her and kept her safest.Tabcat….The Tabcat is perfect for a pet you know is probably within a defined or known area most of the time and it's just a case of pinpointing where they are by walking around and pointing it in different directions. It’s also great for smaller cats/kittens because it is light and small. It’s size and shape (circular), means it is unlikely to get snagged. As mentioned before, if you use the silicon cover to attach it to the collar there is a risk your cat may be able to get their teeth into the cover and hold it. So, you need to make sure the collar is a snug (but comfortable fit) – and make sure you only use a collar with a quick-release safety clip so it will break off the cat if they get it hooked on anything. Use it inside for the first few days, check them regularly, and then they should get used to it and ignore it. If you have a kitten who you want to put a locator device on in future, get them used to a collar while they are still young. It took two weeks for me to get my 9-month old cat used to a collar, and we started out with it being on for only 10 seconds at a time, gradually building the time up.At 9.5g the Tabcat adds only 0.25% to my cat’s weight, the equivalent of a 53kg (10 stone) human wearing a 132g necklace.GPS Collar….If you think your pet is going to go long distances in random directions outside of your immediate area, you may be better off with a GPS tracking collar that maps them in real-time using maps displayed on your phone/computer (and which you can also give friends / petsitters access to) – and which alert you if your pet goes beyond boundaries you set. Some are a similar price as the Tabcat to buy upfront, but the GPS collar usually requires a monthly/annual subscription to work. The Tabcat involves just a one-off purchase price, no subscription.The disadvantage is that GPS tags are heavier and larger than the Tabcat. At 34.5g the GPS one I got, which is meant to be one of the lightest/smallest, adds 0.9% to my cat’s bodyweight. That’s like a 53kg (10 stone) human wearing a 477g necklace! If I remember correctly the various vendors suggest that, because of their weight, GPS collars are only suitable for cats over 3kg, which my cat is. But again, she notices it more than the Tabcat and got her teeth in the silicon cover, so I will wait until she is bigger to use it.The Tabcat is perfect for the moment.Conclusion…I highly recommend the Tabcat. It’s great – as long as you are fairly confident you will be able to get within around 100 or so metres of where your cat may go by walking around their territory, and if there are walls / buildings around you may need to circle around a bit, or find some higher ground to pick up signal. It’s easy to show others how to use it, so if you are away and someone is minding your cat, they can also locate them easily – they only need the handset. GPS collars offer more functionality and unlimited distance, but involve more cost and weight.

I live in a very rural location with a few houses and lots of fields, and my cats are generally free to roam. A couple of months ago one of my girl cats went missing overnight and wasn't found until the next evening about a kilometre from the house. She's unlikely to repeat as we believe she followed our boy cat whose was roaming further at night in the midsummer good weather, but nevertheless decided I needed some tracking method for peace of mind.GPS would be ideal, but even though she's a (small) Maine Coon of about 4Kg all the GPS systems I looked at were obviously too bulky so decided to try the tabcat.So far I'm generally very pleased with it. It's reasonably small and fits on her collar fine - she doesn't notice it's there. It's still a little larger than ideal - reducing the size by 25% would put it in the perfect range - but hopefully technology will improve, and as it is it's not an issue as it is (and far lighter than GPS). The Neoprene cover attachments seems ok, and I wrapped the device in a simple layer of cling film before inserting as the spec is a bit dubious on how water-proof it is.Range in practice is less than stated - through long grass and general rural terrain I'd estimate about 50 to 70 metres. Also the indications on the finder are not linear - you get one red dot at extreme range and spend most of the time just getting up to the second red dot or the lower yellows, but you have to be within a couple of metres for the final green dots to kick in - which is fine and probably better, once you get used to it.So even though ~60 metres is less than the 120 they say (and it may well be more like that when the grass is not so high), in practice that's enough, especially is you know where your cat is likely to roam to. So far I've always located her after a walk around, and having spent the first few days tracking her down to check the device functionality (I now know where she sleeps in the corner of a field!) I'm confident enough that if I go out and get a signal I'm happy I know where she is without having to actually find her.Although not for sale on Amazon, the company also sells the trackers and Neoprene covers separately (£20 and £10), which is reassuring if you did lose one.All in all I'd very much recommend it. It's not perfect technology as yet - 25% lighter and a reliable 100+ metre range would be better - but it's pretty good and vastly better than just looking,Update after a couple of months use: Two problems to be aware of.1. The tracker, while able to penetrate some building materials with a variable loss of signal (windows and standard brick/breeze block walls are fine, 2 foot thick stone walls as I have in places not) is still largely line of site and if your cat is behind a substantial rise in the ground then signal strength is dramatically reduced. Living in the a far from flat location this has caused me a few issues on occasion.2. The tracker handset is rather sensitive to how the battery is placed and this could *definitely* do with some improvement. If the battery is not placed perfectly in its holder then when you can get all lights flashing when searching then it stopping or similar issues. First time I saw this I assumed it was an expiring battery and replaced, but this isn't it as new battery did the same thing a couple of days later. Slipping off the cover and just checking the battery is seated fine has always fixed it (presumably this is a contacts issue) and the new one is still working fine several weeks later. Worrying the first time if you're searching for a cat, but does just seem to be a quirk of the build and it is mentioned in their FAQs so cannot be unknown to them. As I had been carrying the handset around in my pocket on occasion flat against my phone I have studiously checked that I've not bent it, but checking on a ruler shows not sign of anything. Nevertheless probably worth treating it with some care. On the positive side so far I've never had a problem with a tag de-registering if the batter is taken out to be changed or re-seated.Neither of these two items change my star rating, it's still an excellent product and I wouldn't overemphasise either, but not without quirks and added to my review largely to reassure anyone else who comes across the same issues.

I have used the predecessor to this system for many years. This new simplified 'credit card' style device works OK. The range doesn't seem as good as the larger earlier version (the one that had a screen). I also find that each time I come to use the tracking device (usually there's a couple of weeks between uses), the battery is always flat. I do turn it off each time, and even if I forgot, surely the device should turn itself off after a certain period of not being used.UPDATE: the batteries also fall out of the tags that you track. The only way to avoid this is to use the optional rubber covers. Not a patch on the old system, which I had used for many years until they discontinued it & replaced it with this cheap junk.