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Dorchester Center, MA 02124
There’s the Basic plan, which has GPS location tracking, unlimited live tracking, and activity and sleep monitoring, for $6 per month at $144 billed every two years or $9 per month at $108 billed annually. The Premium plan adds Family Sharing, global coverage (2G or LTE cellular coverage from more than 500 cellular networks), 365 days of historical location history, and the ability to export GPS data, for $5 per month at $300 billed every five years, $7 per month at $168 billed every two years, or $10 per month at $120 billed annually.
The tracker weighs only 1 ounce and can be used on any cat over 7 pounds. It must be charged on the charging base before use, and it takes about two hours to fully charge. (The charger snaps on and locks into place, and it’s not the easiest to pull out when it’s done charging.) The charge lasts about five days if you have an indoor cat, but needs to be charged almost daily if your pet is roaming outside.
Once you create a profile for your pet, you’ll set your home location, so the device goes into power saving mode when it’s home, and you’ll also set an activity goal to ensure your pet stays active. Compare Active Basil to cats of similar age and weight to set a personalized daily activity goal. Through the app, you can also see other users’ pets and compare their goals to yours.
I ended up raising Basil’s activity goal (120 to 230 minutes per day was Basil’s default goal), and the app reported that he was consistently more active than 70 percent of similar cats, which gave me peace of mind knowing that I was playing with him enough and keeping him as active as possible in my small apartment in Brooklyn. Through the application, you can view daily (hourly) and historical activity, and compare minutes of activity with an individual cat and others. Basil averaged 375 minutes of daily activity per day, burning an average of 450 calories per day (a metric that is estimated based on factors such as the type, weight and size of the pet).
Traction via Molly Higgins
Traction via Molly Higgins
The Sleep feature works similarly, monitoring sleep duration and dividing it into categories of night sleep, day sleep, and quiet (when your pet is in a relaxed state). It tracks sleep based on inactivity and time of day, so it’s a good estimate but not very accurate. Like activity, I compared Basil to similar cats and obtained useful information along with data on normal amount of sleep; He was at the lower end of normal for an average nap of 43 minutes. I’ve been able to see historically that he sleeps about 14 to 18 hours a day (about eight of them during the day), and each day records his day and night sleep with quiet time, and compares it to the pet’s average sleep.
It also shows the stages of sleep, which periods of sleep the cat has experienced in the day so far, throughout the day, and over time. It’s been interesting to see his sleep patterns, because he often sleeps through the night when I do this, but wakes up around 4:45am when the feeder goes off and again around 6:15am when my roommate leaves for work, and is awake for the first few hours of my work day, but generally naps from 12-3pm every day. I love this feature as a tool to know when Basil might be sick due to oversleeping.