Tabcat V2 Cat & Kitten Tracker - More Accurate Than GPS - No Monthly Fee or Subscription - Includes 4 Homing Tags - Up to 500ft Range - Small & Lightweight Tags Perfect to Find Indoor & Outdoor Cats

I waited a year to write this review. We have a 60 acre property in a rural area. We got a kitten who was obsessed with being outside and it was tough to find her at night time when the coyotes, owls, foxes, etc. come out. We got this collar because it was not as bulky as the fancier collars and because we have no wifi or cell service on most of our property. After a year, I can say that this thing is amazing. While you do have to walk around a bit to pick up a signal (if your cat wanders like ours), once you pick one up it is pretty easy to follow it to your cat. I can usually find our cat in less than 5 minutes. On the rare occasions that she wanders further than usual, when I'm starting to question whether the collar works as I can't find a signal, I push her usual roaming area on foot and, sure enough, I find her in some far flung location that is off her beaten path. I bought the two pack. I have changed the batteries once in the remote that picks up the signal, and I have switched from the first signal sending collar to the second. I have not tried to change the batteries in the actual thing sending the signal on the collar. I'm not sure if that's possible (feel free to tell me what I need and what to do, if you know). But to be honest, I would buy more collar signalers from the company even if those batteries cannot be changed. It works that well. I have not used the fancier kinds which have a map on a screen but I honestly couldn't see the reason to buy that more expensive option when this works so well. Once you use it for a while, you begin to discover your cat's regular routine and it becomes even quicker to find him/her. I have been meaning to rave about this for a while and finally remembered to do it. I highly recommend this.

We have been mostly happy with the Tabcat. We have used it for about 18 months. Is it perfect? No… is it effective? YES. Our cat roams the neighborhood by day. At night we like to bring him in. Tabcat effectively allows me to walk around the neighborhood and find him. It has a secondary advantage in that when the Tabcat is activated, it beeps on the cats collar. If you associate the beeping with cat treats, very quickly your cat will learn to come to you when activated. As such, he usually “finds me” when I turn it on. The range is listed at 300 feet (which is only true in open areas). In a domestic neighborhood the range is about 70-100 feet.PROS: It’s small. Good battery life. Can be used to train your cat to come. Does NOT require a monthly fee.CONS: Not a true GPS. Must use supplied tracking device (I’m always afraid I’ll lose it). To effectively use the tracker, you need to learn its “quirks” (there is a learning curve).TIP: We use the Tabcat in conjunction with an Apple AirTag. Both devices easily fit on the cats collar. The AirTag lets me remotely know the general area of the neighborhood that the cat is in. The TabCat lets me pinpoint him.

I have a cat that wanders. I try and keep him in at night but if the weather is good he goes on walkabout. He can get back into the garage through a cat door but as we live in a rural area I'd just rather he be indoors with us for his own safety. If you've done your due diligence on cat trackers, you know there are 3 types. The Apple Airtags are cheap and show up on your phone, but they use Bluetooth and have a very short range. If you live out in the sticks like me, they are almost useless since there won't be a large network of iPhones to pick up the signal and share it to your phone. Then there are the GPS trackers. They'll give you a precise location of your cat right on your screen. The trouble is...they're expensive with a monthly fee (they use a cell phone network to track the transmitter so it's like getting your cat a mobile phone account), they're relatively heavy on you cat's neck, and the battery needs recharging like every day or so. Which brings us to the third type, a beacon tracker which is what the TabCat is. No monthly subscription, light weight, and the batteries last a reasonable length of time. The trouble is the range, which I have found is about 500ft. The cat collar tag is a miniature beacon. It is always listening but only transmits when it hears an interrogation signal from the handheld unit which you are holding. (If the tag was transmitting all the time the little hearing aid batteries in it would be dead in a matter of days, since transmitting requires far more power than receiving.) So, when you go looking for kitty you turn on your handheld unit, which is about the size of a credit card. It sends out an interrogation signal. If the cat's tag is in range it will respond with pings that your handheld unit picks up. The handheld unit has a highly directional antenna inside it. Swing it around and a series of eight LEDs light up based on how strong the received signal is from the tag. When you aim it for the strongest signal, that is the direction towards the cat. It's a lot like those police movies from the 1960s where they are tracking a car with a direction finding radio. Unless you cat is very close by, you are going to be hiking around a lot. Twice now I've ended up nearly half a mile from my house looking for the cat. And found him. It's a bit of a skill. I ended up walking for half an hour in various directions until I finally got a weak hit. Then a lot of moving left and right and seeing how the direction changed. Eventually I got close enough for a strong signal, whistled a couple of times and up popped Sherman, no doubt wondering, "What are YOU doing here?"Since I'm a bit of a radio geek I can live with the efforts involved. I did contact the TabCat folks and they told me it is using 2.45GHz microwave frequency. Which explains how they can get such an accurate directional antenna in the small handheld unit, since this is a very short wavelength. I did try an experiment by mounting the handheld unit at the focal point of a small microwave antenna dish of 14" diameter. It did increase the range a bit but it is pretty impractical tromping through the woods carrying a dish antenna. So far the battery life has been decent; I'm still on the original tab and handheld batteries. You can buy a dozen or more replacement batteries on Amazon for just a few dollars; these are fairly common button batteries. The instruction book tells you the type. A minor annoyance is that the handheld unit times out after about a minute so you have to press the keys again to restart it. But I know they have to do this because of the limited battery capacity. If you left it on constantly transmitting it would probably blow through the battery in short time. The tag you attach to your cat is very light weight. My cat has worn a breakaway cat collar for years so adding the tag to it didn't bother him a bit.All in all, if you worry about your cat's location, this unit does indeed work. But it will require some effort on your part too, chasing him down. Some people get the mistaken impression this is going to somehow show up on your phone's screen with an X marks the spot. It doesn't. It has nothing to do with your phone. You will be searching for the strongest signal on the handheld unit and it will involve a degree of exercise. But...better than having to walk a dog multiple times a day, right?