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It's always heartbreaking to see weatherworn signs affixed to trees, advertising missing animals. One always hopes the pet was safely returned to its owners but one can never know for sure.
In fact, less than two percent of cats in animal shelters ever make it back home, compared with some 17 percent of dogs. The primary reason is that more dogs wear collars than cats. According to a new study published in The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, putting collars on some of the country's 88 million cats might help improve this situation.
Whereas most dog owners are required by their city or town to register dogs and purchase a license, this is not always a requirement for owners of cats. Additionally, cat owners are less likely than dog owners to use identifying collars due to fears that a collar could strangle a cat, or that cats will rip them off. But researchers determined that collar-related injuries to cats are very low.
Researchers also found that embedding microchips that store identification information under the skin of the cat is effective in returning cats to their owners. If a cat is lost, a scanner detects the chip and reads the owner's information on it.
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