We've got a house cat who gets supervised time outside. Every once in a while, she likes to take it on the arches and go on a little adventure. We have a large stand of trees behind our house, with very dense undergrowth, our own little forest. It's great because we have all manner of critters visit us: birds, squirrel, chipmunk, raccoons, rabbits, even a few deer. But, there are also poisonous snakes. We can't have kitty roaming around in there, as interesting as it may be for her.

Yes, we could have her chipped, but for reasons I won't go into, we'd rather not. Both the wife and I are iPhone users. Amazon has pages of collars for AirTags. The cat probably would venture no farther than about 50 yards out, although with animals, you never know.

Any experience with this?

We put one on our nieces dog when we were dog sitting it for 4 days. It seemed to do a pretty good job of showing that he was in the fenced in back yard when we would put him out there. Fortunately didn't have to test it any further than that

We have two cats and two dogs. All of my animals are indoor pets except for my pups going into our fenced backyard to do their business.

“My” cat, Leo, got out of the house and was gone for seven and a half weeks a little over a year ago. We thought he was gone for good. We looked all over and were completely heartbroken. He’s park Maine coon and part rag doll with some Heinz 57. My buddy lives behind us and found him in his garage one morning. I got him back and never again taking any chances.

We have one for Pearl, our Yellow Lab.

Kathy gets notifications when we leave Pearl somewhere other than home. It does a pretty accurate job of identifying where we have left her.

I believe you can calibrate the notifications that suit you best.

You realize that after a day the cat will be notified it's being tracked? You will be in trouble then! Unhappy kitty, more's the pity!

We moved with an outdoor cat. The trick per the experts was to only let him out when he was already hungry. Might be a good way to keep him from running off. Sorry I have no idea on the air tag.

3 for $99: 100% recommend. Used twice to track down my Greyhound who WILL bolt at any given opportunity

Very accurate. I was running thru the neighborhood, phone in hand "Seeing" him cross from one backyard to the next until I could cut him off. You can zoom in/out and it even has a pointer like a compass and map / Satelite overlay. Away from home; If I pull my "Find my" and zoom in all the way I usually can see what corner of the house he is in. If you are within your own network you can track it down to the nearest inch (Like if you had one on your keys and they fell between the couch cushions) Big Brother / NSA factor aside; Amazing tech really.

Caveat: They "ping" off your wifi and other Apple devices. As I understand it ALL Apple devices contribute to the "Network", you cannot turn it off. AirTag position updates happen only when it is within Airdrop/bluetooth/wi-fi range of your wi-fi or any other Apple device and the Wi-Fi it is connected to.

Example: the second time he got out, by the time I had my shoes on he was 10 houses away (Greyhounds are ridiculously fast) he ran almost a mile and passed the last row of houses and into an area with no apparent "Service" It showed the date and time of his last location and a message "Unable to connect" or something like that. So did not disappear, just not updated... I found him ~100 meters past that house. If I didn't snatch him then and there and he kept going he would have popped up probably another 50 meters past that as he closed in on some older homes (Certainly one of them would have an Apple devise).

We have a tag on Clark, on the unlikely prospect of his finding himself out of range of his mistress. However, I don't think they are appropriate for your (Para's) situation. They do not work on GPS directly, but on the location information derived from the closest iOS or WiFi device which themselves might be looking to known WiFI locations and/or GPS. So it isn't likely that the tag will notice the cat wandering into the forbidden zone.

There may well be third-party apps that allow some sort of geofencing alerts, but the bone-stock Apple stuff doesn't do this. Now if kitty were toting an iPhone or Apple watch, you might have more options. Similarly, setting up WiFi to cover the area of interest might be effectual. There are technologies like LoRa that are intended to provide this sort of functionality, but this is still very much a roll your own solution space. Kitty would be wearing a transmitter and battery around her neck with all the support/maintenance that this implies.

I expect a commercial easy-to-use product isn't too far off, but for now there is an integration component that puts this particular application out of reach for most folks.

We just got one for our cat. She is totally indoors, actually has never even tried to get out.

She is a hider though and we will look all over for her, fear she has gotten out or into the garage (which she does try to sneak into).

I’ve got unused AirTags, figured what the heck. $10 buck for a collar (her old one was getting ratty anyway) and now she cannot escape us!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BLP3ML1X


Kind of freaks her out when we have it play the sound. Doesn’t scare her, she just can’t figure out where it is coming from.

Last time I was getting my hair cut, my stylist showed me a pic of her Maine coon and mentioned it had an air tag. She showed me where it was in her house via the tag ( we were at the salon, at least 20 min away).
I think it would work in a populated area where there are many iusers.

My brother does. They make nice collar adapters. I do believe they'll work. The trade off is in the bulk on a petite animal.

Air tags are great but have limitations. I put them in my luggage when I travel. Really good tracking. Also have one in me car in the off chance some thing ever happens.

You do need to understand their limitations. The work by using Bluetooth and connect to other apple devices(iPhones) to ping locations. In populated areas they are great because so many people have iPhones.

Never used one on a animal but I have thought about it. If you live in an area where the cat would be close to other people with iPhones your good to go. If is really rural results may not be what your looking for.

With that said with the cost of Airtags now it doesn't hurt.

We puppy sit for a mini schnauzer who wears some type of air tag location devise... recently the puppy was at our house approx 12 miles from his home location...they decieded to check location even they knew where "bailey" was it took all most a 1 1/2 days to lock in puppy location..... drill sgt.

Yes. We have the collar attachment device that has loops at each end, and the AirTag slips into the middle pocket. Having the heavy AirTag as a dog tag makes too much noise and the tag is subject to loss.

Have air tags on both my dogs. I got the holders that put the tag flush with the collar and mount it inside against their fur/skin. I had one on a hanging holder and one that was mounted on the outside of collar and both fell off, but my dogs (GSD's) do roughhouse and grab eachother by the neck.
It was nice being able to keep track of them when we were on vacation and had a dog sitter at the house.

I don't but it makes sense. Just keep in mind their range is roughly 90' but the audible alarm should help find it.

Probably wouldn't work in the "forest" unless there was WIFI coverage from someones home nearby. If you could find an older Apple watch and adapt it to collar that would work on the Find My app but would need to be kept charged before sending the kitty out.

We have use Tile on our inside cat for years. It has saved her twice - when we initially moved in she got herself stuck in a vent, would have taken forever to find her without it. Thinking about about changing to Airtag, but either way it is worth it.

I've heard they work best in densely populated areas where there are lots of cell towers to give a more accurate fix on the position.

Yes, there are the issues with being in range of a network to track such as another iPhone but they work well, we ended up putting one on our basset, she used to just go out back and sit in the grass and sun but as she got older and dementia was setting in she'd wander off, not far but go to neighbors houses based on finding a scent.