What do you think of collars with bells on

We have collars for our 2 young kittens around 4 months old. They have bells on not out of necessity just for our own amusement. I know the bells are meant to stop the cats from being able to hunt easily, but they don't relly get the chance to do that anyway, except hunting each other. The kittens don't seem to be bothered by the bells but I would be interested to hear what others think about it. At least when they are out in the yard to play it makes them easier to keep track of.

My cats hates collars, I can not even put flea collars on them, they just struggle or lay dead still till I take it off.

I think bells are a personal preference. I allow my cats to hunt. Bugs, birds, and rodents are their natural source of food, and aides their digestion. In this regard bells just would not work. Another negative with bells are they also tell your feline's enemies where he is, not just you. You get cat killing dogs that will thank you for giving him an easy target. I believe it also hurts a cat's pride not to be able to hone their natural instinct to hunt.

Some people have a problem with hunting cats and cleaning up behind them, if this is the case, go for the bells. But why would you own an animal and not let it be and do what it was intended to be?

We got a collar and bell for Boots, as he is an inside cat, we thought he would be easier to keep track off.

But he fussed and would crawl off and hide, or sit and cry while trying to get the collar off.

We worried he would get stuck somewhere's and choke himself trying to get loose, so we removed it.


So a collar with bell can be a good thing and a bad thing depending on the animal. Even an outside cat could get stuck with a collar and you wouldn't hear the bell and kitty could get hurt or die, trying to get loose.

My cat always hated wearing a collar as well, I thought that putting a bell on her would've been cute, but I'm pretty sure she would've ripped it to shreds just like she did with every collar I ever tried to put on her!

I think the collars with bells are classic retro cute and every cat in every anime has a collar with bells. But my current cat doesn't like to wear any kind of collar so I don't force it on her. My calico cat when I was a child wore a red collar with bells on it. I thought it was so cute. I would definitely put a collar with bells on my current cat if she would allow it, but she won't. Oh well.

Well so far my kitties don't mind the bells, I don't think Gizmo cares at all, he's very laid back as long as he's being fed, he let's you know if he's hungry but otherwise he's just laying about. Rosie doesn't mind but since she is so active I've decided to leave the collar off when she goes out to play for safteys sake so she wont get caught up.

My last kitties wore collars with bells, and they didn't seem to mind. They didn't go outside very often, and when they did, they just hung out of the patio. I liked them just because I could usually tell where the cats were because of the bells. The collars had a safety feature that would break away if they got stuck on something. I did work - I tested it (not on the cats, don't worry). I'm in between cats right now, and I don't know whether or not the next cats will wear them or not. It depends on how well they tolerate them.

That being said, I've heard that they aren't very effective at preventing a cat from catching birds.

We have never placed collars with bells on our cats simply because to us cats are pets that give us time when they want to. We don't go out and search for them, they come to us when they want to keep us company and they always seem to know when their meals are served. I also worry that it might be noisy for them, I mean it would probably hurt my ears if I had a huge bell around my neck and my ears were that big.

We never bothered to put a collar with a bell on our cat. She was kept indoors all the time anyway so it would probably have just been irritating for us rather than anything else. I can understand the desire to prevent a cat hunting but that is their natural behaviour. To be honest, I would probably let them do so. Anyway, we could not let our cat outside because we lived near to some very busy roads. Besides, we would always have been worried if she did not come back. In addition, we lived at the top of a block of flats so there would have been no way for us to know that she wanted to come back inside. I doubt the other residents would have allowed us to put a catflap on the two main doors to the building. She did have a collar with her name and our address on it just in case though. Even if we never let her out it was still possible that she could somehow escape. Luckily, that never happened. The closest occasion was when she climbed out of a window onto the roof but she quickly returned of her own accord.

My cats used to have collars with tags on so that in case they got lost, the people who will find will know how they can contact us. The cats didn't really hate wearing the collars. They just get damaged easily when the cats would scratch their ears or clean themselves. Although there was one time, when my cat got caught in a tree branch because of her collar. After that, I changed to retractable collars. I just stopped using these because my grandfather told me that my cats can't hunt rats. It was because the rats are being warned that the cat is near because of bells. It was a really funny logic. From then on, I took the collars off.

My little Izzy has a cute little pink, white and black polka dot collar with a tiny little pink bell on it. It was just soooooo cute!!!! Thankfully, she doesn't mind her collar being only 12 weeks old. I like it because I hear the little jingle every time she is running around the house and when I call her and hear it coming towards me, it just makes me smile. I do think the collars with several bells on them would probably be annoying for the cat and for me though!