How One KLAWS Volunteer Uses GPS to Monitor Her Cats

My cat family and I started using GPS trackers over a year ago. We love them! Here’s why.

Since we often travel in our van, we leash-, harness-, and car-trained our cats immediately. When we lived in a city, we walked them on leashes and harnesses. There are pros and cons to walking cats, which is more than the scope of this post can cover.

We began using the GPS trackers when we overnighted in the van. We’d be cautious to choose rural, safe spaces to camp. We let the cats roam in the evening before bed and in the early morning, when they started playing with our faces at 5 am (as cats do). The trackers enabled us to track the cats' locations if they left our line of sight. We maintained a strict routine of feeding times and exploring times.

While the tracker doesn't function perfectly, it absolutely changed our camping game, and we've never stopped using it since. Like many GPS technologies, the tracker doesn’t always pinpoint the exact spot, and if you’re outside a data zone, it can struggle significantly. There are also functions like sound and light that aren’t 100% reliable. Every tracker will have its own quirks, but with practice, we’ve learned how to hack ours and its system. We’re sure that every new version of cat and dog GPS trackers will be better than the last. And so far, we’re happy we have them!

When we moved to a rural area of Ireland, we quickly gave up walking the cats; it was awkward and less safe on our tiny roads than allowing them to roam. But we'd never let the cats truly roam before. The tracker helped us transition from leash-walking to free-roaming (with boundaries).

Today, we still maintain a schedule, and we only let the cats out when we can monitor them. There have been issues with cats not coming home, their tracker collar coming off their neck (a safety feature), and other mishaps. With the GPS tracker, we can always trace directly to the last spot where our cat was. And goodness forbid they should truly go missing, we now know exactly where their usual hunting grounds are and can search therein. We can even use the “history” function to see where they were and deduce what could have led to the mishap. The trackers allow us to set "safe zones" and notify us when the cats leave them. So, if our cats go onto a road that we don't want them to be on, we immediately use the sound function to call them back while we run out to fetch them.

Finally, the trackers really aren't that pricey, and the value increases over the number of years you subscribe. To be honest, they're worth every penny, and we constantly upgrade! There are various brands of cat-friendly GPS trackers and collars on the market. Additionally, websites offering comparisons and assessments to help you choose the best for your furry family.

It's nice to know that wherever we go in the world, our cats have options to explore the outdoors in the safest way possible. Of course, we'll always worry about them. However, they deserve to live a happy and fulfilling life. The GPS trackers are one step in that direction! We highly recommend them.

Emily Stewart