Study: Almost all cats will wear a collar

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Fewer than 2 percent of missing cats are reunited with their owners, mainly because the cats don't wear any identification, U.S. researchers say.

Lead author Linda Lord of Ohio State University says many cat owners may never try to get their cats to wear collars because they assume the cats won't tolerate it. The study, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, finds almost three-quarters of the cats would wear a collar.

The researchers recruited 338 cat owners and their 538 cats were randomly assigned to wear plastic buckle collars -- designed to detach if they become caught on something -- or elastic stretch safety collars.

Almost 400 of the cats, 72.7 percent, wore their collars for the entire six-month study period.

Owners of the 115 cats that did not successfully wear collars for the six-month period said the cat lost the collar (7.1 percent); scratched excessively at the collar (4.8 percent); collars came off and the owners chose not to replace them (3.3 percent); or cats got collars stuck in their mouth or on another object (1.5 percent).

"Part of the success of a cat wearing a collar is the expectation of the owner" Lord says in a statement. "For some owners, if a collar came off once, they were done. Some put the collar back on their cat five or six times."