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Tying to keep tabs on a wandering tabby? A GPS collar for cats with a tracking subscription might be a good idea. Gone are the days of clunky, error-prone trackers made with dogs in mind—the last few years have seen an explosion of high-quality, cat-centric options.
But before you buy, it’s worth taking the time to familiarize yourself with how cat GPS trackers work, including ranges, data, and maintenance. There are a lot of different models on the market—and some alternatives that might suit your purposes just as well, if not better, than an expensive device.
To get the lay of the land, we’ve reviewed some of the most popular cat trackers, tested them on our own adventurous kitties, and talked with a tech journalist who has spent years writing about the field of live location tracking.
How Do Cat GPS Trackers Work?
Pet GPS trackers make use of multiple location technologies, including satellites, cellular networks, short-range WiFi, and even shorter-range Bluetooth. You’ll give your cat a collar or tag to wear, and once the device is activated, you’ll be able to see their location on a map on your phone, usually via the tracker’s downloadable app.
What’s the range of a GPS cat tracker?
It depends on what kind of tracker you use. Satellite-based GPS devices are theoretically worldwide. But in practice, most GPS cat collars rely on a mix of strategies, especially cell towers, and work best in areas with good cellular coverage.
For example, if your cat got on a plane and flew from San Francisco to Chicago, you would likely be able to sit in your apartment in San Francisco and track your kitty across the country and into a building in Chicago.
However, if your cat were lost in a remote forest or an area with an incompatible cellular network, the cat’s device might not be able to connect to a network.
What kind of information does a cat GPS collar tell you?
With most GPS cat collar trackers, you pay for a subscription to the tracking service in order to receive information. Once you’re subscribed, you can follow your cat’s path via the company’s website or app.
Most services let you designate a “safe area” where your cat can be. If your cat leaves the safe area, the tracking service notifies you immediately by email or text message.
Devices with real-time tracking will let you see where your cat is on a map at any given moment, and those with tracking history will let you see where your cat has been over the past 24 or 48 hours.
Do GPS cat collars need to be charged?
Definitely. Most GPS cat collar devices have lithium batteries that need to be charged frequently. A charge might last anywhere from a few days to two weeks, depending on the brand of GPS tracker you choose. So if you forget to charge the collar and your cat races out the door, you may have only a day or two to track them before the collar goes dead.
The good news is that many GPS cat collar devices also let you connect them to your home WiFi network. That can be a big battery saver, since as long as your kitty is being tracked by your WiFi, their GPS device won’t send periodic signals to the GPS or cellular network.
Are GPS cat collar trackers heavy?
The early generations of GPS trackers were heavy—and more practical for dogs than for your small cat. Now there are trackers that weigh less than an ounce. When buying, check the device’s weight. While some devices are integrated into complete collars, most of the newer GPS cat collar trackers are clip-on accessories that attach to your cat’s existing collar.
Keep in mind that if your cat wears a breakaway collar for safety (good!) and loses the collar (bad!), the device may be lost as well.
Are GPS cat collar devices reliable?
If you’re in an area with good cell service that matches the networks used by your cat tracker, our tests have found most of the leading brands do their job well. When GPS trackers fail to work, it is often because of the following:
- It’s being used in an especially remote area
- Someone forgot to charge the tracker
- Pet parents struggle with the software
- An enterprising pet chewed on or otherwise found a way to ditch their device
What are the weaknesses of GPS cat trackers?
Pet parents in especially rural and remote areas are likely to have the biggest difficulty with cat GPS trackers, but that’s not the only obstacle.
The other big issue tends to be around the house and yard. When your cat is “home” (in the designated “safe” zone), your tracker will switch to WiFi and Bluetooth—which tends to result in slightly less accurate location data. If you’re buying a tracker because you can’t find your cat around the house, a GPS tracker may not be the answer, even with the feature that lets you softly “ping” them.
Forgetting to charge a tracking device is also a real danger. A weekly charging schedule can be difficult for some pet parents to stay on top of—and if the device isn’t charged when your cat makes their great escape, it won’t do you any good at all.
Can I Use an Apple AirTag on My Cat?
Apple makes it clear that its AirTags are designed to track possessions, not pets. However, a lot of pet parents find that AirTags make great pet trackers—under certain conditions.
AirTags make use of Bluetooth, UWB (ultra wide band) technology for calculating distances, and a system called Near Field Communication (or, Crowd GPS).
Here’s how it works: You pair an AirTag with your iPhone or iPad. The AirTag emits a unique ID that can be recognized by most smartphones so that every time your cat is near a smartphone, that information is sent by GPS to back to your phone.
As long as your cat is around other people’s smartphones, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to track them down.
You can also use an AirTag’s Bluetooth capability to track a cat in your house. You’ll get a visual that shows you exactly where your cat is relative to your phone (“20 feet behind you”), and you can ping the device for audio clues, making AirTags a good solution to the problem of a cat who loves to hide in the house.
AirTags are considerably cheaper than GPS collars, and they require no subscriptions. They also have a user-replaceable battery that can last months.
The drawback, though, is significant: They depend on your wandering cat being near someone with a phone. No phone, no data, no cat.
It’s also worth noting that newer AirTags have an “anti-stalker” feature. This causes them to chime every 8 to 24 hours if they are out of range of the paired phone, and the chiming could alarm your cat.
For pet parents going the AirTag route, we highly recommend getting an attachment that’s tricky for your pet to remove (something a pair of super clever Italian Greyhounds taught us).
What about radio frequency (RF) tags?
Another technology for finding your nearby car keys, wallet, or cat is plain old RF (radio frequency). An RF tag for your cat will come already paired with a remote.
You’ll carry the remote into the area where the cat is (such as your house or yard). When you get closer to the cat, lights on the remote get brighter, and the remote beeps with increasing rapidity. RF trackers are simple but accurate—and a lot cheaper if you’re just looking for a cat who’s hiding in the house.
A GPS Expert Weighs in on the Best Cat Trackers
Journalist Glenn Fleishman has spent years studying live location tracking and other cutting-edge technology, writing for publications like Forbes, The New York Times, and MacWorld. When it comes to inexpensive and relatively accurate tracking of your cat, he thinks that Apple AirTags would do a pretty credible job—in a dense urban environment.
“In city or suburb, I am sure an AirTag fits the bill better than a GPS tracker,” Fleishman explains. He points out that you’ll get several months of charge from a single tiny lithium-ion battery and frequent-enough tracking from neighborhood iPhones and iPads. “A cat wandering down the gap between two houses and near a Mac sitting near a window will get its AirTag tracker picked up and passed along,” he says.
Outside an urban neighborhood, the investment in GPS makes more sense—if you consider how cat GPS trackers work. “I can see turning to a GPS tracker in a spread-out community where your cat’s haunts take them out of range of people and their devices,” Fleishman says. “With GPS, as long as there’s cell coverage and line of sight to the sky (at times at least), the device can send back a signal.”
He adds that the GPS gives you something else that AirTags lack: the ability to track your cat across time as well as space. Your GPS app will show you your cat’s path through the neighborhood—even the path taken by a car with your cat inside.
So Are GPS Cat Trackers Worth It?
Cat GPS devices definitely offer significant benefits for concerned cat parents—but whether you really need a fancy device and subscription depends on your goals.
- If you have an outdoor cat and are concerned about their safety or curious about where they go, a GPS tracker and subscription is the way to go. These devices will typically let you see both your cat’s current location and their movements over time across a huge range of territory. Good examples are the Jiobit and the Tractive.
- If you have a far-ranging outdoor cat in a sparsely populated area, your best choice is always a GPS tracker. If your tracker of choice runs even partially on a cell network, you’ll want to make sure it’s one you know is well-served in your area. The Whistle Go, for example, runs in large part on AT&T’s network.
- If you have an indoor cat—or an outdoor cat in a populated neighborhood—you may be fine with an AirTag. This assumes that your paired phone is frequently within range of the cat so you aren’t triggering the tag’s anti-stalker chiming feature. (If you and your paired device are going to be away from the cat and its tag for an extended period of time, you could remove the tag from the cat. Even better, substitute a second AirTag, this one paired to your cat sitter’s phone or iPad.)
- If you have an indoor cat who likes to hide and you are confident they will always remain in your apartment or house, an RFID tag is also an inexpensive and effective tracker. Just make sure that you, or your cat sitter, knows where you keep the remote.
Other Ways of Keeping Up With Your Adventurous Cat
If roaming the outdoors is not a viable (or safe) option for your cat, there are some other great ways to get your cat out in the fresh air. Check out these articles on strollers, cat-friendly backpacks, harnesses, and catios.