One of our fuzzballs Dewey appears to have gone missing. 
He’s not a roamer but we haven’t seen him in over 24 hours which is really unusual.
He’s a very, very friendly cat so hopefully someone has picked him up and will take him to the pound.
We’ve done the usual, put up posters, driven around looking for him. Its a public holiday here today so the RSPCA is closed but we’ll be checking there tomorrow.
Until then, anyone have stories of cat’s that came back?
Our cat went missing just once. The back gate had been left open and she got in the lane - then couldn’t get over the 8 foot brick wall again to come back.
She was tagged, so a few days later we got a call from the council saying someone down the road had had her wander in through a gap in her wall, and into her house through the cat flap that her own former cat had used to use.
Apparently, from this lady’s point of view the experience went something like this:
Scene: nighttime. A bed. Sleeping woman.
thump
wazzat!!!..oh, just the cat. go back to slee…wait a minute! I DON’T HAVE A CAT ANY MORE! AAARGH!
Coco was very well looked after in the 2 or 3 days she was with neighbor lady, and is still happily with us 10 years later.
I hope your friend comes back to you soon.
I do hope you find your missing puss. In the past month I’ve discovered two unknown cats, both very charming and keepers but…
In each case I was able to return the cats which is what I’d have wanted if they were mine. One now includes our house as part of his territory and he is welcomed but we know where his home is.
One of our cats just came back home last night after being gone for three days. We had kept trying not to freak out because she did this once before, many months ago.
She’s a very reserved cat, disdainful. She has trained us well.
We figure every once in a while she just gets a wild hair and needs to go off by herself, kind of like a mother leaving her kids with somebody while she hits the casinos for a couple days of R & R.
We were really glad she came back to us “kids.”
Persevere! I lost my cat last year, and eventually found her again 28 days later. So you have a chance too!
Look at night/in the wee hours of the morning, get a cat trap (might help), call out and clunk cat food tins together, and hope for the best! I hope Dewey had a collar on…
I had a cat who was gone for about 10 days. The babysitter let him out by accident when she had to make a choice between keeping the cat or the toddler from dashing out the door. We put up posters and asked around, but we eventually gave up hope, mourned his loss and put his food dish away.
Then one day I looked out the window and there he was in the back yard, all “Doop-y doop-y doop…where have you all been?”
Last wednesday my indoor only super sweet dumb cat was let out by guests, who used the back door and left it open. This cat is normally attached to me like Velcro. We did not see him for over 24 hours, despite searching, calling, and rattling cat food. So early Friday morning I did what I figured was logical; I peed in a cup and went out drew paths to the back deck. A few hours after that, my husband spotted dumb cat sniffing its way right up a line back to the house.
Dewey is beautiful. If I lived near you, you should probably have started the search at my house, because even from here, I’m sorely tempted to kidnap him through the computer screen.
No stories for you, because my boys are all inside kitties who are terrified of the great outdoors, but I know cats come back all the time. Here’s hoping a neighbor found him and is loving him while they figure out who he belongs to.
Thanks everyone.
The good news is that our runaway turned up around 10:30pm. I was checking out the front one last time before going to bed and there he was with one of the other cats. He’s fine, if a bit hungry, dirty and tired. He smells a little oily so I think he may have accidentally gotten himself shut inside someone’s shed or garage.
Funny thing is, my cat Nimitz, who is the undisputed king of the street, took off up the road and 1/2 an hour later both of them were waiting at the front door. I don’t want to anthropomorphise but I swear Nimitz was looking very self-satisfied, like he had gone out to fine his buddy and succeeded where we had all failed.
Dewey’s collar was gone, presumably lost during his little adventure, so he’s grounded until we get another one. 
Excellent news.
I had a similar panic about four months ago. Turns out the little guy had wandered in to the attic in the apartment complex (someone had probably left the door open when moving a lot of stuff in/out). I only checked there as it felt like I had checked absolutely everywhere else. When I heard his little miaow I just dropped to the floor and sobbed through relief.
When I moved up to Alaska I took my cat, Snuffer (Dallas eatery), with me. No way he could be an outdoor cat up there so from time to time I would put him in the Jeep and take him for a ride to see the outdoors. One such ride took us to the outskirts of town and up a hill where there was a nice neighborhood to drive through. Well, Snuffer got kinda antsy being in the car and before I knew it he had wriggled through the window left open for air and, a little freaked, ran into some brush. I looked and called for hours but, exploring Alaska, Snuffer was nowhere to be found.
For the next several days and weeks I continued to drive back out there and look, call and leave him food. Finally I just had to hope that someone had given him a good home.
Fast forward 9 months. It’s winter and I’m leaving in a month. I go to a floor in my office building I don’t normally frequent, glance at a message board I’d never seen before and there’s a free cat to a good home… and it’s Snuffer. No mistaking his B&W markings. I go by to see the lady, explain how he and I got separated and she invites me over. We go up to the bedroom, open the door, my old friend looks at me with sleepy eyes curled up on the bed, says “Meow”, walks over and we’re cat and loyal servant again. Joy.
I hope you find your kitty.
My old cat was gone once for a week. I let him out after a big snowstorm (couple of feet), thinking he’d look around and be right back – uh, no.
My guess is someone else let him in, because he wandered back a week later none the worse for whatever adventures he’d had.
He then lived with me for another umpty-ump years, dying at age 19.
No stories, but stopping in to send out a wish for a speedy return!
Glad to hear it worked out. Here’s my very recent and only story. (tl;dr alert!)
My cat has never been outside since I rescued him cold, shivering, hungry, flea-ridden, and **loudly **yelping for help. I’d never had or wanted a cat - I actually had always kinda hated cats. And pets weren’t even technically allowed where I lived… and I still couldn’t *not *take him in, he was that pathetic. (Figured I could get someone to take him off my hands eventually… yeah, right! :rolleyes:)
Anyway, he never even tries to take a single step outside, even if I leave the door wide open, all he’ll do is poke his head out the door at most. I don’t think his memories of the outdoors are very good ones that he’s looking to relive.
So, the other day, I came home from shopping and was bringing stuff in, when not one, but TWO flies got in. I was still bringing stuff in, and one of the things was a big new bin which was going to be his much more roomy new litterbox. So, I put the big plastic bin in the doorway and left the door open, hoping the flies would see themselves out while I went and got the rest of the groceries. I did that, and was now putting everything away, when I noticed that the cat wasn’t poking through all the stuff I just brought in, and he was nowhere to be seen. Even when I didn’t just get home bearing a bunch of curiosity-inducing stuff to poke through, he follows me everywhere, all the time - the little bastard is practically always directly underfoot.
So, I’m like WTF!? and start searching the house, worried that maybe he finally worked up the nerve and went out the front door. After some pretty thorough searching, he was nowhere to be found, and wouldn’t even come running when I loudly shook his box of treats. And the thing is, not only does he always follow me around, but he never goes into hiding, except from the vacuum-cleaner, which he hasn’t even done in a long time, since I now always proactively put him in my bedroom closet when I vacuum so that he won’t have a friggin’ heart attack.
Anyway, I decide that I’m now wasting time searching the house when he’s almost surely outside and possibly wandering even further away every minute that I delay. So I go outside (in the dark) and do a long and thorough perimeter sweep, and… nothing. I start doubting that he went outside, and decide that he’ll probably be waiting just inside the front door when I go back inside, where he ALWAYS is when I walk in the door. NOPE. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, and after multiple cycles of indoor and outdoor searches, I’m now getting close to resigned that he wandered off quite far outside, and since he doesn’t know the area, and he has absolutely no street-smarts, there’s a good chance that he may be gone for good and totally helpless out there.
Then I remembered the place he went once when he first encountered the terror of the vacuum-cleaner - under the footrest of the couch-recliner, and into the deep recesses of the interior of the couch. I had already looked under the footrest with a flashlight on at least one of the previous searches, but if he went deep into other parts of the couch, there’d be no easy way to tell. Still, he had never gone in there, except for that one time when he was extremely spooked and traumatized by the sound of the vacuum, and there was no reason he would be scared enough to go in there now. But, other than being AWOL outside, this was really the only other place he could possibly be, that I hadn’t already searched.
So, after many unsuccessful attempts at sticking my arm wherever I could fit it deep into the recesses of the couch to feel around, I decided to lift it up on its end to see what I could see from underneath. It’s when I do this that I hear a clunk and some scratching sounds as that little bastard was struggling to maintain his footing so as not to fall to the bottom of the up-ended couch! So I put it back down and he promptly comes out looking up all sheepish at me! ARGGG! :smack:
So, with him following me, I go back towards the front door to close it, since I had left it open hoping he would wander back in from outside on his own. It’s then that he freezes in his tracks and inexplicably starts to scurry back away from the door. That’s when it became apparent… it was the big new plastic bin I had left by the door! He was scared shitless by this big new thing that was “looming menacingly” by the door!!! :smack:
Anyway, I hid the bin away in another room to let him chill out a while. Then the next day I filled it deep with kitty-litter and put it next to the litterbox it was to replace. And he instantly jumped in and started digging around furiously! NOW, HE LOVED IT! :smack::smack::smack:
Fucking cats is weird! 
I had a cat that came back after adventures.
A male, spayed Siamese.A strictly indoors cat all his life. With no whiskers.*
He ran out the door of my 4th floor apartment. He came home a month later, scratched at the door, just walked in and curled up on the couch as usual, like nothing had happened. His foot pads were very calloused, he had lost weight, and gained muscles. It must have been a long journey.
So, yes,…Happy endings can happen…So don’t cry too hard !
When I was about 11, we moved from Virginia to Oregon. One cat stayed in the house (indeed, was probably too old and decrepit to go far) but the other ran off. After about a week, my folks, who were still sleeping on the couch in the living room, saw the missing cat peering in through the sliding glass door, as if he wasn’t sure he had the right spot. He lived another six years or so, and the next time we moved, he stayed the hell put!
Glad to hear your kitteh came home!
Me too!
My little orange cat tries, every day, to get through the back gate. She succeeds sometimes, and the other day was gone for several hours. MrTao thinks I’m silly when I worry about her, but it’s like with a kid: sure, something can happen no matter what you do, but you have to at least TRY, right? 
Out gentle, indoor only (used to be a) tom got out 2 years ago. No sightings for days, but food left on porch was being eaten - but one morning it was a family of possums.
We started leaving the garage door up a few inches, moved food there. The food continued to disappear. One night, 9 days later, we spotted him crawling under the door - which was quickly closed by remote. Could not find him in garage but left door to house open and he woke me up at 5am wanting breakfast.
Took about two weeks for him to be re-accepted by the other cat which he grew up with - I guess he smelled wrong.
