Risks associated with free-roaming and collar use in cats-An online survey

Publikationen als Autor:in / Herausgeber:in der Vetmeduni

Heizmann, Veronika; Windschnurer, Ines; Schauberger, Günther

Abstrakt

The limited literature discussing potential risks (and benefits) associated with collar use in free-roaming cats leads to inconclusive recommendations for cat owners. In this study we investigate the incidence of major issues associated with free-roaming and collar use. We collected data from over 5,0 0 0 Central European participants through an online questionnaire and set out to provide an overview of the inci-dence and type of problems caused by collar use and the incidence of major risks of free-roaming. We further aimed to identify factors predicting outcomes of collar problems, traffic accidents, animal-inflicted injuries, and missing cats. Among other results, we found the risk of cats dying from a collar-related inci-dent to be considerably lower than other risks cats encounter while free-roaming; the most common risk of free-roaming was found in injuries resulting from animal conflicts. The deadliest risk of free-roaming was traffic accidents; 70.5% of cats involved in traffic accidents died. We further found that identification and registration in pet registry significantly increased the odds of cats being reunited with their own-ers. Our results provide a base from which further hypothesis driven studies can explore more specific questions regarding collar use in (free-roaming) cats. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

Dokumententyp

Originalarbeit

Open Access Type

Hybrid

DOI

10.1016/j.jveb.2022.10.002