It’s Giveaway time again, and this month there will be 5 lucky winners, as the lovely Marla and Rob from Kitty Collars are offering 5 of their Personalised Cat Collars (featuring the all-important breakaway safety buckle) as giveaway prizes!
Personalised Cat Collars are a great way to ensure your contact details are easily visible should your cat become lost – even the friendliest of cats can become so traumatised if they are lost that it’s very difficult for anyone trying to help to get close enough to be able to read an i.d. tag. Personalised Cat Collars are also an ideal way to advertise the fact that your cat is on a special diet, and therefore shouldn’t be fed any treats by well-meaning neighbours!
Kitty Collars Personalised Cat Collars are made from soft nylon for your cat’s comfort, and each collar has an individually-tested breakaway safety buckle. The 5 lucky Cool For Cats UK readers who win a collar will be able to choose from 3 sizes and 11 different colours!
To enter the giveaway simply leave a comment at the end of this post – only one entry per person please. Entries must be in before midnight on February 28th 2013, and the 5 winners will be chosen in a random draw on March 1st 2013, and then notified by email. Apologies to overseas readers, but this giveaway is only open to addresses within the UK.
(If you click on the image below it’ll enlarge and you’ll be able to read the text – which tells you everything you need to know about the Personalised Cat Collars.)
Cat lovers Marla and Rob share their home with 3 beautiful black and white rescue cats: 15 year-old sisters Rosie and Flo, and young whippersnapper, Timmy, who’s 18 months old. Flo gets the credit for starting Kitty Collars: she came home a couple of times with one of her front legs caught in her elasticated collar, and this prompted her concerned owners into seeking a safer alternative; and so Kitty Collars was born!
Marla and Rob’s rescue cats – Timmy (top) & Flo (bottom).
UK-based Kitty Collars have been trading since 2004 and sell a wide range of cat safety collars. Their Personalised Cat Collars have been recommended by Cats Protection, and have also been voted one of the 50 Best Pet Accessories in the Independent Magazine.
Flo’s sister, Rosie (sporting a very fine moustache).
There now follows an important public announcement regarding cat collar safety:
The only truly safe collar for your cat to wear is a collar which is fastened with a breakaway safety buckle. Any other type of collar is potentially lethal. A breakaway safety buckle will break apart under pressure, thus preventing your cat from becoming entangled should the collar snag on anything, or from inserting a front leg through the collar. It’s important to test the breakaway buckle on your cat’s collar regularly as sometimes they stiffen with age – should this happen the collar will no longer be safe and you need to replace it immediately.
Elasticated collars (collars with a conventional buckle and an elastic insert in the fabric of the collar) are often incorrectly marketed as safety collars, when in fact they are anything but safe. Should your cat snag an elasticated collar, for example when out and about tree climbing, the elasticated panel will allow the collar to stretch, which in theory means your cat can wriggle safely free. Unfortunately these collars can also twist as they stretch, and your cat can then become trapped in a deadly noose.
It’s also possible for a cat to insert a front leg through an elasticated collar, which, if you’ve never seen a cat collar wound, sounds pretty innocuous. For the uninitiated, a collar wound is a deep laceration, often in the ‘armpit’ area of a cat, which can occur very quickly after a leg is pushed through a collar. This kind of injury is frequently very difficult to treat, and occasionally fails to heal at all. If you’d like to find out more, here’s a link to the Feline Advisory Bureau information page about collar wounds. (Don’t follow the link if you’re squeamish – the photos are quite graphic.)
Finally, never rely on a collar as the sole means of identifying your cat should he or she become lost – always make sure your cat is microchipped too.
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