Have you ever seen a cat or dog with a collar on that looks like a lampshade? While at first glance it does look like a lampshade, it is not. Recently, my sister’s cat had minor surgery and the animal hospital sent her home with a elizabethan collar. She called me and asked why they had put a lampshade on her cat. She said that the cat didn’t like it on. She said that the cat was walking into walls and could not eat. I told her that she could remove it for eating, and put it back on. I first experienced the e-collar in 2005 with my shih-tzu, Sugar. She too was walking into table legs and walls. We had to carry her outside to potty. My husband elevated her food and water bowls…and that didn’t work. Finally, we realized that the e-collar was too big for her. Shih Tuzs, Bulldogs, Boston Terriers, Pekingese and Pugs have brachycephalic faces, so the e-collar ususally sticks out too far. He finally got the idea to trim the e-collar down. An elizabethan collar or as some people call it, a space collar, cone and yes lampshade, is a protective medical device worn by an animal, usually a cat or dog. Shaped like a truncated cone, its purpose is to prevent the animal from biting or licking at its body or scratching at its head or neck while wounds or injuries heal. The device is generally attached to the pet's usual collar with strings or tabs passed through holes punched in the sides of the plastic. The neck of the collar should be short enough to let the animal eat and drink. Although most pets adjust to them quite well, others won't eat or drink with the collar in place and the collar is temporarily removed for meals. While purpose-made collars can be purchased from veterinarians or pet stores, they can also be made from plastic and cardboard or by using plastic flowerpots, wastebaskets, buckets or lampshades. Modern collars might involve soft fabric trim along the edges to increase comfort and velcro surfaces for ease of attachment removal.
How the Elizabethan Collar got its name: The collars are named from the ruffs worn in Elizabethan times
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Brightly colored neck attire can hamper cats from chasing birds, however researchers warn that non-safety versions can be lethal. Dr. Michael Calver of Murdoch University, Western Australia, has published several studies on techniques to reduce the toll domestic cats are wreaking on native wildlife. Calver and his PhD student Catherine Hall discovered a website, Birdsbesafe, selling multicolored collars resembling scrunchies that claimed to stop cats catching birds by ruining the cat's camouflage. While the website claims the collars reduce bird kills by 87%, at that time there was no independent evidence to verify the claim, so Hall went to work. Her results have now been published in Applied Animal Behavior Science. Hall couldn't back up the 87% claim, but she did find the collars cut down kills by 54% compared to similar periods with no neck attire. This could make a big difference to the hundreds of millions of small animals killed each year. Numerous native species are being pushed to the edge of extinction by cats, and while much of the damage is being done by those that have gone feral, domestic animals are also a big factor. Hall found that the 114 cats unwillingly enrolled in the program brought home far fewer lizards and frogs when wearing the collars, and that there was also a reduction, albeit smaller, in the number of birds they caught. She observed the cats did not seem to adapt to the collars as some do to bells, and received reports that birds were more likely to avoid the ground when a collar-wearing cat was on the prowl. A study run around the same time in North America found the collars to be even more effective for protecting American birds, but did not investigate reptiles or amphibians. However, Calver stresses that no one should be rummaging around the back of their cupboards for a scrunchy the 90s forgot, as some have suggested after the story broke. “That's really dangerous,” he told IFLS. Birdsbesafe products attach to safety collars with breakaway buckles that prevent the feline from throttling itself if snagged. “Captures of mammals were not significantly reduced,” the paper reports. Calver attributes this to most small mammals lacking color vision. He acknowledges, “Some marsupials have color vision, but they are mostly nocturnal and the cats probably hunt them at night so it may not do much good.” Rodents' lack of color vision could prove an advantage, however. Cat owners who want their pets to control rats and mice but stay off the birds can use the scrunchy collars to achieve both effects. In this way, the scrunchy-style collars do much better than previous control mechanisms Calver has tried, including cat bibs that prevent pouncing and alarms that sound when the cat charges its prey. Unlike all the previous methods Calver's team have tested, the scrunchy-collars protected frogs and lizards as well as birds. The cats spent more time at home now that their hunting was curtailed. A few dropped out of the trial because the owners believed the scrunchies had given them dermatitis, but 96% either showed no signs of distress or quickly got used to wearing the scrunchies, proving the study was done in Perth not New York. Most of the owners planned to continue with the collars after the study finished. However, one cat left the trial because its owner reported the household dogs wouldn't stop barking at it.
