Fair enough, I should have been clearer about that and specified that water only freezes in cold temperatures, lest someone misunderstood that subtle point.
>Avoid collars because they get stuck on branches(even the ones that are designed to come undone easily can)
That doesn't mention the problem of freezing. Again, I'm just pointing out that your personal experience might not be a solid basis to provide advice to pet owners all over the world, and in fact, could be detrimental.
What if a pet owner lives in a place where a wet collar won't freeze because they don't get "real" winters. What if a collar would help return a lost pet to its family?
Your experience is not universal and people are just pointing that out to you.
Fine. Still, it's an extremely minor nitpick, and that's what annoys me about it. With all of my tips combined, + living in a location well suited for cats(real nature like a forest nearby, low speed limit, picking a cat built for the local environment), your free-roaming cat simply won't get lost without something so bad happening to it it's very likely dead. Or it left for greener pastures because you treated it like shit.
Some people don't understand how loyal cats can be, and how well they navigate and map out their environment(did you know cats have a detailed 3D mental map of their surroundings at all times? It's all in the hearing). That's how you get a lot of false alarms where normal cat behaviour is misconstrued as a disappearance.
Other people think their cats are invincible and will do cruel things like forcing them to stay outside all night with no way to get inside. And yeah, if you do that, your cat will go hide in a garage and end up stuck there. But that's the owner's fault and they could have easily avoided it.
So yeah, maybe a collar helped you find your cat. But the only reason it got lost is likely because you fucked up somehow. And you may have been lucky the collar didn't kill your cat.
Having a cat is easy and a joy if you just know the first thing about what the fuck you're doing. And the extent to which people don't pisses me off so much I can sometimes go off the rails about it. Sorry about that.