Many years ago I owned a pretty cool Birman cat called 'Roti', due to her incredible appettite for indian food. Roti had a very hard early life, as she was hit by a truck when she was only about 3 months old, and spent the next 12 months confined to a large box while she had two legs in a cast and numerous bandages and stitched wounds that all needed to be treated carefully. She did make a full physical recovery, but mentally she was never quite right. She was definitely more nervous as a result of the accident and the long recovery.

Anyway, my girlfriend at the time decided she needed a bell around her neck to protect the native birds that populated our garden. I've never been a fan of bells on cats, but the reason seemed to make sense.

So one day she came home from the supermarket with a bell, and I attached it to Roti's existing collar. She stood up, made perhaps two steps toward the door, heard the bell and went absolutely mental with panic. Unfortunately she went straight for the outside door, and once she was outside we couldn't keep up with her.

We didn't see her for 4 days, but we heard little bell sounds every few hours, mostly from underneath the house, where she would usually hunt mice before she had a fucking bell tied around her neck.

We left food under the house, but she never touched it. After 4 days she just came walking back in through the door, looking shattered, skinny, and mangy as hell. As I walked toward her, she looked at me and the bell rang jsut a little bit, but even that was enough to scare her and she shot like a dart under the couch. It took about 15 minutes to persuade her to come out from under various bit of furniture, without setting off the bell again. If the bell ever rang, she would take off again and hide somewhere else.

BY this stage I was both frustrated but incredibly sad for her. The poor fucking cat had obviously been stuck under the house for the whole 4 days, simply unable to do any normal cat activities because the bell would ring every time she moved and she would just run around like a spastic until she stopped moving just long enough for the bell to be quiet. And then she would stay there, like a statue, for minutes at a time.

While I was sad for her and felt terribly guilty about it, it as also fucking hilarious to see the poor thing.

Eventually I got a hand to her, and quickly just pulled the collar over her head, as it was pretty loose to begin with. I let her go immediately and she did a huge shake like she was drying out after getting wet. Then she squatted, looked me in the eye, and did the biggest cat shit I've ever seen. I have never seen her doing a crap before, cats are usually quite private about it, but I realised this poor cat hadn't been able to complete a shit for 4 days. Every time she would have tried, the bell would have rung for some reason and her attempt at crapping would be stopped in it's tracks.

God knows how many times she had tried to take a shit without getting one out.

Straight after the shit she walked over to her feeding area and took a huge drink of water and ate about 2 meals worth of food right then, without stopping. Yeah, she hadn't been able to eat or drink anything either, because that fucking bell would go off when she chewed and scare her shitless.

She got a lot of attention for the rest of the evening, and my GF bought her a new bed and some new toys just out of guilt. We both felt really cruel about it, even though we never intended the cat to freak out like that. But once we were happy that she was OK, we laughed our asses off; it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen a cat do. Just the idea of this poor animal being unable to eat, shit, sleep, or do pretty much anything without setting off some strange loud noise that seemed to be attached to her own neck... it's nasty but if I'm honest I'm still smiling now, 20 years later, remembering the look of relief and the huge crap she took the instant she was freed.

TL;DR: Don't assume your cat will be cool with having a fucking bell tied to it's neck. Even if it's not as twitchy and mental as our cat was, that bell is still going to fuck up it's hunting habits and it might not like wearing it at all. Pay attention over the first few days.