Once cats enter the geriatric stage of life, they often meow for no apparent reason. The first symptom is usually some howling at about the time the lights go out in the house at night. As cats age further, they may start doing it for long sessions at seemingly random times. I tried the collar on our cat and it delivered enough calming effect to eliminate eighty or ninety percent of the random meowing. Our cat has certain insecurities, one of which is a near-empty food bowl. (We adopted her starving off the street when half-grown, and she's never gotten over that particular insecurity.) The collar will not stop her from meowing incessantly if her food supply gets low. My point is that I wouldn't expect the collar to make a cat a lot less anxious about what it thinks is a serious concern -- it doesn't make them stupid!

Don't overlook the fact that the collar (as advertised) only lasts about a month. I've noticed that some have a stronger odor than others. The odor, which the box describes as "lavender chamomile fragrance," can be pretty much unnoticeable, can be as described, or can be similar to insecticide.

My cat can be bad about not using her pan. In addition to the specially treated cat litter, we use spray pheromones to good effect in household areas where we want to discourage that. Spray pheromones are not supposed to be used near the cat pan, because that can discourage use of the pan. The idea with the spray is to use it where you don't want messing and scratching and not to use it around pans or scratching posts. I was concerned that having the pheromones literally on her at all times might take away the effect of the spray, but it did not. We've not had any new problems of not using the litter box. We've also had no problems with rashes.

Our cat doesn't think highly of our Sheltie. If there's been any help there, it's been marginal.

So here we have yet another technological weapon offered up to the pet-management field of battle. Is it worth bothering with? In summary, this is a product that might make a big difference for you and your cat. It won't tranquilize your cat; the effect isn't that powerful. It doesn't relieve the cat's serious concerns, and any significant help in making it get along with other animals is unlikely. (That isn't advertised either.) But if you've got a random howler or some other sort of reasonably mild, cat malaise, I recommend you give it a try.

Hi,
I've never written a review before, but this has been such a sanity saver for me and my family.
My cat has been acting out since our move in March. He was urinating everywhere and hissing at everyone but me.
We took him to the vet and all the tests came back negative. He was put on prozac but could not handle it and was still hissing and growling. I tried this collar, I wasn't hopeful, but then...It worked. I have my sweet kitty back. He has done a 180 and has stopped all of the bad behavior and seems truly happy again. Thank you for this product. It is wonderful!

To start with, I am very pleased with this collar, although it does have some drawbacks. I have a 1-year old rescued cat who, while he is the sweetest, most wonderful cat in the world by day, he turns into the Tasmanian Devil at night. We have a very small house and even with the bedroom door shut, we can still hear him meowing. He has been neutered, but he has extreme seperation anxiety and meows literally non stop all night long if we shut him out of the bedroom. There is no pause in the meowing... he can go up to five hours at a stretch without taking a break. I am a light sleeper and he keeps me awake all night long. But if we let him in, our bed becomes his playground and he cannot stand it when one of us starts to fall asleep and will prompyly dive-domb or bite us to wake us up.... leading to him swiftly being shut out..... cue more howling and meowing all night long. Its a vicious circle. We cannot let him out as cyotes and raccoons live in our neighborhood and have attacked neighborhood cats, so this collar was our last resort.

The pros - Well, good news, it works! But at a price. I would personally like to see the collar redesigned, then I would give it five stars. I'm not sure how the hormone works but from the first night we put this on him HE STOPPED MEOWING AT NIGHT. COMPLETELY. Myself and my partner slept our first full night in the 8 months since we rescued him. Heaven!

The cons - In the morning we found a very blissed-out, spacey cat with huge pupils who wouldn't make eye contact and acted stoned! I would like to know exactly what is in this collar, and how it works. As soon as we took the collar off him he 'sobered up' within about five minutes and started meowing and making eye contact again. Plus the entire front room smelled like lavender-scented bug-spray upon our awakening. The smell was very strong in such a small space.

- Collar design is a big minus. The collar is very stiff plastic, and (as a previous reviewer notes) is actually coated in a white flakey substance which cracked and was already coming off where the collar bent when we opened the packaging. So the pheramone stuff is coated ON the collar rather than being impregnated IN the collar (as the packaging claimed).

- Second big downside - it's NOT a breakaway collar. Its a hard plastic collar with ribs on one half to hold the buckle in place so if your cat caught himself on a branch etc he's not going to be able to break it or get out of it. I would definitely not leave this on the cat unsupervised all month, even though the packaging says it can be worn for up to 30 days. So what we're doing is only putting it on him at night, and keeping the collar in a ziplock bag during the day.

- Adjustment problems: Due to the hard plastic substance of this collar getting it adjusted once it was on is almost impossible as the collar does not bend to let you feed the extra bit through the loop. So I just pre-adjusted it and slipped it on over my cat's head - even though he hated me doing that as it left his face and head coated in the flakey white pheramone substance... it looked like he'd been out in the snow!

So those are the pros and cons of the pheramone collar. Good luck!