DIY Safety Cat Collar- Tutorial

Remember the incident where I swore I'd only put safety collars on Pumpkin from now on?

Well, it's become a pain in my ass. She loses her collar at least once a week. Sometimes, they only stay on for a day. It's getting to be expensive and it's annoying to run to Walmart all the time. And in the meantime she's running around all free and naked like a wild cat.

So, I decided to make my own. It's super easy and way cheaper.

You just need fabric scraps and heavy duty velcro. You can use the non-adhesive kind, which I plan to eventually do, but I found some adhesive stuff stashed away in a junk drawer. It sticks surprisingly well to fabric and releases with about as much force as the regular safety collars.

Step-by-step: (click to enlarge)

1. Grab a piece of fabric that will fit around your cat's neck, with enough room to put two fingers under the collar. I found 9 inches long and 2 inches wide fit nicely.

2. Fold your fabric hot-dog style and iron a crease in the middle.

3. Unfold the fabric and fold one side of the fabric towards the middle.

4. Iron a crease.

5. Repeat with the other side, with both sides meeting in the middle.

6. Fold along the middle crease so that the raw edges are completely inside the hot dog bun.

Sew along the edge of the strip. Do the best you can with such a thin strip. Your cat won't care if its not perfect.

 

You will end up with your collar. If you'd like, fold down the ends and sew so they won't fray. I'm not bothering, because I know she'll lose them soon anyway.

Attach your velcro, cutting it to fit if needed. Just sew around the edges if you don't have the adhesive kind.

The finished product:

I tried to get a picture of her wearing it, but she was more interested in playing with the camera strap than modeling her new collar.

I made about 10 of these in less time than it took to write up this post. And, if she loses them quickly, I'll have another one waiting to be put on. I win, cat!

P.S. For identification, I print out my phone number using a label maker and loop it around the collar. No sense in spending money on tags that will just be lost. I'm sure there are quite a few collars with my phone number strewn about the area.