I'm sure some cats do just fine with collars, and I know about breakaway collars, but I don't feel comfortable putting a collar on the mama cat because I'm still afraid she'll get hung up on a fence somewhere. (Maybe it's the memory of seeing a neighbor's dog hanging from their fence a lot of years ago. She was a aggressive pit bull, and I was scared to death to have to go into their back yard and help get her down. She survived, and didn't bite me.) Her "kittens" are two years old, and are not touchable because she kept them hidden for two months. I had to trap them to get them spayed/neutered. I tried in vain for several months to tame them, and now we just sort of have an understanding. They hang out around me because they feel confident that I'm not going to try to touch them. I'd have to sedate them to put a collar on them, so that's not happening.
I've been reading contrasting views on the effects of cats on the bird population. The thing is, cats are natural predators, and birds are their prey, along with some creatures I'd rather not have around. It's not an endearing feature of cats that they hunt birds, but it's a reality. Honestly, it's one of the reasons that I really didn't want to once again be a cat owner. I didn't choose it. It chose me.
My neighbor has told me numerous times that she's happy to have this cat family in the neighborhood because it takes care of the mouse population. I'm pretty sure that the mama cat had hidden the kittens in her yard, and they still hang out there a lot of the time entertaining my neighbor with their antics. They're all fixed, so we don't have to worry about increasing the cat population, and the one male doesn't spray. Apparently getting him neutered before he matured was a big benefit in that respect.
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