I don't want to implant GPS tracking, and I'm afraid of collars getting hung up on something. I could try a break-away collar. If the GPS tracker worked, I should be able to find the collar if it breaks away. I mentioned elsewhere in the forum about the problem I had with them before. At one time, we had a cat door that would open only for cats wearing a device that we would attach to their collar. The cat door worked pretty well but Lydia kept coming back without her collar, which meant she'd lose the device too. Then one day, I put a new collar on her and she reached up under her collar with her paw and broke it away. She had figured that out. Right now, I am inclined to keep her in. Winter is coming, anyhow.
You don't have to implant anything; it's a device on a collar. (Or maybe a harness would work?) I suppose it's a moot point since Ella is now an indoor cat.
I might change my mind on that in the spring, but cold weather is upon us now anyhow so I think she can be in for the winter.
I have a harness and leash that I used to walk Barney with. I haven't used it for a while because he doesn't want to go outside. People would have interesting reactions to seeing a man walking a cat on a leash.
We see a lot of them when we're traveling in the RV. People in campgrounds don't want to let their cats roam around (and there are usually rules about pets on a leash) so it's pretty common to see cats being "walked."
It looks like he's making some speed, at least. When I used to walk my giant tortoise I'd think "Geez, we're never going to get there".
I recently got scolded by the Seniors That Be for going off topic so much. I'm glad for Ken and glad for Ella.
My neighbor's (two doors down) cat, who disappeared on the same day as Ella, returned an hour after Ella.
We took Bubba in because we believed, wrongly, that he might do for Ella what Ella did for Cutie and Lydia. She energized them and made their lives more interesting. They came to accept her and Cutie, at least, liked her and played with her like she was a kitten herself. Not so with Ella and Bubba. She still hates him and he is oblivious to the messages she is clearly sending, which exacerbates the problem. However, Bubba is family now, so he is here to stay. Since Bubba won't give her any space or a place to be alone, we're working on a possible solution. We have large room in the back of the house that started off as a porch, and was later converted into two bedrooms. When we bought the house, we took down the dividing wall and made a library out of it. The library is disconnected from the rest of the house, except for a door. There are a couple of windows because the wall between the rest of the house and a library was originally an exterior wall, but they have been boarded up. We've ordered a cat door that will open with an RFID chip that can be fitted into a collar, so I am rearranging things in the library, which needed to be done anyhow because we had allowed it to double as a storage room, and cleaning it up, and we're going to install a cat door somewhere and only provide Ella with the RFID-chipped collar, so that she will be the only cat able to access the library. The library has sixteen windows. From these windows Ella could see any part of the back yard and parts of the side yard and driveway. We haven't been using it as a living space because our pipes froze several years ago and we elected not to heat the library. Doing so was very expensive because it wasn't well insulated, and because of the sixteen windows. We bought a small wood stove that I hope to have in before winter hits us, but otherwise we have plenty of low-energy space heaters. I'll make room for a cat tree, either buying a new one or taking one of the ones out of my office, and I'll set cat beds in several of the windows, and maybe get a long table or shelf so that she can have access to most, if not all, of the windows. In the event that I stick with my inclination to keep Ella indoors, at least until spring, this might help with that problem, as well as giving her a place she can go to in order to be alone because she will have an access collar and not Bubba. I will probably also put a desk in there so that I can split my own time up between the two cats, and get work done at the same time. I have an iMac and a MacBook Pro, as well as a Windows machine that I might want to set up there.