A sad reality is that few cats that get lost are ever returned to their owners. One study showed only two percent of cats that end up in shelters are reunited with their families. My cats wear collars and tags, and as I’ve written before, a mere $2 spent on a collar and tag can get your cat home again. Some people seem to think that collars are somehow “dangerous” (even though quick-release collars have been around for years). But if you are really against putting a collar on Fluffy, you have another option: microchipping. A microchip is about the size of a grain of rice and contains a transponder that can be read by a microchip reader that is scanned over the animal’s body.
Most vets offer microchipping of companion pets, and in many areas of the country, shelters microchip every animal they adopt because a microchip increases return to owner rates dramatically. One shelter director in Washington I talked to many years ago called microchipping “the best thing we’ve ever done.”
Although the technology has been around for ages, microchipping does have a few drawbacks. The first is that it’s not a visible form of identification. All shelters have been donated “universal” scanners, and shelter staffs are supposed to scan every animal they receive. If the scanner finds a signal, it means there’s a microchip and an owner out there somewhere. The shelter then calls the microchip company, which has a database of records that match up the pet with the owner.
Unfortunately, the process doesn’t always result in joyful happy endings and rainbows. User error, microchip, and database issues can keep Fluffy from making it home. Some shelter staff either don’t scan animals correctly or don’t do it at all. Because some shelters only hold strays for a short period of time, a pet can be either adopted or euthanized before the owner contacts the shelter.
The other problem may be the chip itself. In the U.S. two primary chip manufacturers have existed for years. Both AVID and Home Again microchips use a frequency of 125kHz (FDX-A). Unfortunately, a large pet hospital called Banfield that operates in PetSmart stores for a time sold chips that work at 134.2kHz (ISO FDX-B). Although this chip frequency is widely used outside the U.S., the bad news is that the “universal” scanners used in most U.S. shelters couldn’t read the chips. Banfield subsequently stopped selling the chips and Home Again announced that it has a scanner that can read the 134.2kHz chips, but of course some shelters still don’t have them.
Finally, the owner information registered with the microchip company needs to be up to date. A database is only as good as the data contained in it. The information may be registered to the veterinarian who inserted the chip or to the owner. If the owner moves, and especially if the owner moves more than once, it can become difficult to match up the pet with the owner. Before you microchip your pet, find out what chips are used in your area and keep your information up to date in the database.
Although microchips are a great option, they aren’t a substitute for a collar and tags in my opinion. Many people are lazy. If they see a tag, they know the cat has an owner and can call easily. Sure, get your pet a microchip, but also spend the $2 on a collar and tags, so the lazy guy can call you too.