I know the evils of RFID. I've been to protests against embedding RFID into drivers licenses, I know that the RFID embedded in US Passports was hacked before they managed to roll out production, and if you have one, you should keep it shielded lest some RFID reader hooked up to a nefarious device senses you walking by. I know that people worry that everything will eventually have an RFID chip in it and they worry about how trackable they become because of it.

I know all of this, and yet I still purchased a Loc8tor plus so I could figure out where the heck my cats are hiding outside. You may have seen the Duracell commercials featuring the Brickhouse version of the device. Well, they were out of stock, and I discovered they were made in a land where everyone is apparently pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and numbered, as well as videotaped out the wazoo, if that's even physically possible, which I am sure it is in England. Quaint issues with their .com site led me to the .co.uk site to order from. It was actually cheaper to buy in pounds anyway. Got the Loc8tor and a couple of splash-proof tag cases for my kitties. DHL delivered it in just a couple of days, so I put the tags on their collars and let them roam.

The tag itself is fairly light, about 5 grams, the silicone case slides onto the collar, so it's not TOO much of a bother for them, I hope. So far I can tell if they are hiding close by, or if they've wandered well beyond the range of the receiver. This is the sort of technology that gives the people who lay awake at night worrying about RFID cold sweats. Supposedly you can find this tag up to 600 feet away . . . in a flat field with no tall grass I guess. I live next to rolling fields and lots of trees. So when the kitties are off adventuring, I have trouble finding them unless I wander through the neighbor's yard, or the ex farm field next door they like to access by going under the chain link fence the farmer erected oh so many years ago. Once, when searching for one of the cats I found the collar she managed to get caught on a thorny bush in that field. No cat, but at least I found her collar! By the time I got to the house, there she was.

A few days ago her sister, who looks very little like the maine coon she half is and a bit more like her siamese half showed up at the door without her collar. So yesterday with tracker in hand, waterproof boots and jeans on despite the warm weather I go wandering through the overgrown field of things with thorns looking forlornly for that damned collar and tracking tag. I make a rather large loop around and finally as I get closer to home, on the opposite side of the field from my property the tracker starts beeping! I don't have to order more splash-proof cases! I follow the beeping through more things with thorns to its location.

So I turn off the sound on the tracker, because the tag itself emits a beeping when it is being tracked, and I find that somewhat useful in determining its actual location. The actual location turned out to be behind some rather large blackberry bushes. I grab the collar and notice what looks like a large clump of dirt on the splash-proof case. After I extract some more thorns from my jeans and head home I notice that dirt smells rather foul. It turned out that after my cat managed to get her collar off, not the first time she has done this when out of the house either, she decided to show her true disdain for her tracking device, and proceeded to take a crap on it. Luckily, the splash-proof case, being made of silicone, is also poop-proof. I was able to clean it off and return it to her, as much as I am sure she does not appreciate it. I know how she feels.