tractive.com

I love my cat’s Tractive collar. Purchased October 2025. I bought the Tractive after months of deli

I love my cat’s Tractive collar. Purchased October 2025.

I bought the Tractive after months of deliberation - my cat, Chunky, had previously managed to lose an Apple Tag, and I wasn’t sure I could personally commit to needing to charge his collar every week, and though he could keep a collar on for a while, they would occasionally go missing, and surely they were more of a gimmick than anything?

However, I kept seeing the Ads, and I kept looking. My cat was adopted from stray and I’ve never had success preventing him from wandering. He then kept a collar on for about eight months straight (rubber collar that I did remove to clean every now and then).

We also found out we were moving only 380 metres away, and I wanted a way to locate the cat should he try to go back to his old (much nicer) garden. Chunky was adopted following being stray for a period, and had never accepted being prevented from accessing outdoors.

I am also disabled, so searching for him in the past has been really hard.

Tractive ran a 30% off with a 60 day return period. I cracked and bought it, 100% thinking I’d be returning the collar within the 60 day period, so the fact that I was dropping so much cash didn’t matter as I’d get it back.

Well, I fell in love with this thing. The first couple of weeks I found myself constantly checking the app, even if the cat was sitting next to me on the sofa, just to be sure that it was working.

Ahead of the move, I took Chunky to the vets to enquire about gabapentin to help the transition, and showed him the tracker and the app - he was quite impressed and suggested that, as I’m able to track Chunky, we can wait and see how he reacts to the move before trying gabapentin, so that helps.

I show my Cat’s history maps to everyone. I always check in on the weekly review. His average activity has gone up since I got the app, because it showed that he was slightly less active than he should be. I got him a robot mouse to chase around. Now he is number 23 in the local rankings (out of 50) for activity and the insights told me he is very active compared to most cats of his age and breed!

It would be great for it to be quicker to turn live tracking on when needed - suddenly the “safe zone” size increased. But I have used the live tracking to locate him in neighbour’s gardens a couple of times and get him home. You can’t really hear it beeping - probably a good thing as it would scare the pets, otherwise - but the light is very helpful in the dark.

We’ve now moved. Setting up the new virtual fence around the house has been a bit tricky but I think I have worked around it by creating multiple “no go zones”. My cat hasn’t tried to get out too much yet, but the Tractive collar does reassure me that I’ll be able to locate him when he does finally escape.


Cons:
- battery dies quickly when using live tracking mode.
- friends say my cat looks like a criminal with a leg tag on. It is bulky, but my cat doesn’t seem to care about its size.
- the collar it comes with is ugly, but the case fits regular collars so I just need to get around to changing it.
- the silicone cover was quite hard to get on and off at first and now has a small rip in it (it’s been maybe five months). It’s quite pricey to get new ones.
- would like some brighter colour options for the silicone cover in the future.
- turning on Live Tracking when you need it, in “low power zones”, isn’t the most straightforward of things to achieve.

Pros:
- initial purchase cost seems high, but really it is nothing compared to the peace of mind this gives me.
- the app is fun to use when you’re not needing to urgently find live tracking or radar.
- the light on the collar whilst live tracking is on is very helpful in the dark.


Long story short, I am extremely happy with this purchase. I would recommend even for indoor cats as you never know what could happen.

Date of experience: Mar 23, 2026