I don't understand why people are allowed to let their pets roam free. I grew up fishing feral cats out of places they weren't supposed to be, and it drove me <i>crazy</i> that people would just let their un-spayed, un-neutered cats wander around to become their neighbors' vicious little problems.<p>Even if your kitty is fixed, she's plenty destructive to the local wildlife, not to mention a disease risk when she gets in fights with raccoons and other animals that carry rabies. Dogs aren't allowed to run free, and cats shouldn't be, either.
The BBC has an article about tracking cats (from 2013), although the animation could have been better.<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22567526" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22567526</a> (animation)<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22821639" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22821639</a> (actual article)<p>The accompanying documentation can be found on YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPthfv1XL_w" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPthfv1XL_w</a>
If you have a cats that roams outside, beware of bunchers. Bunchers are thieves that trap and steal domesticated pets and sell them to laboratories to be experimented on: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncher" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncher</a><p>An RFID microchip combined with a GPS collar (Pawtrack.com has a good one) may help prevent such a terrible outcome, but there are no guarantees.