So one of my old high school friends recently started renting a room from me (I own a house, but rent out two bedrooms to help pay the mortgage). He brought an indoor-only cat with him.
When he was considering moving in, I pointed out that we have a garage, and it would be easy for the cat to get into the garage, and from there escape. He dismissed this possibility as unlikely.
So last night I drove up in my car, opened the garage door with my garage door opener, drove in, and out ran the cat, who (of course) took off into the night.
Earlier in the day, I’d had a handyman over installing some shelves, and I completely forgot to warn him to try to keep the cat out of the garage. Which may or may not be how the cat got into the garage.
Ack.
There needs to be a concept for when you say “if you do X, it is almost certain that at some point someone will slip up and Y will happen”, and then Y happens, and even though you may be the one who slipped up, you still are irritated at the person who accepted the risk.
The kicker is… this is a male cat, not fixed. I said “shouldn’t you get your cat fixed?” and he said something about how that destroys the cat’s personality or something, plus the cat was always inside so why would it need to be fixed?
Anyhow, anyone have any good advice on how to find the cat? It was here for about 10 days, so might have started to learn where to find food and a litter box, one might assume…
(Oh, and how do people with purely indoor cats manage to keep them from ever escaping? Cats are so fast and so good at hiding when they want to… I grew up with cats, but they were always indoor/outdoor, and it was never a problem…)
Put food outside and hope it comes back after it gets laid. As for keeping indoor cats indoors…luckily for us (knock wood) the main exit door of our house goes through the laundry room, so we can “airlock” the exit. This minimizes the amount of scrambling after the escapees we have to do. In fact, the last time Pixel escaped she was so overwhelmed by all the new smells she was easy to catch.
Tell your roommate to look near the house. Indoor cats usually stick close to the house when they get outside.
I’m surprised you don’t have a problem with the cat. Unaltered adult male cats usually spray to mark their territory. It is an unholy stink that will ruin furniture.
I was wondering this myself. Indoor, unfixed male cat = Phew.
If he doesn’t turn up nearby, you might want to check where the roommate used to live - cats are good at finding their way to their old homes, provided it isn’t too far away.
Wow, sorry about your predicament, but for right now The World is his litter box. At this point you should feel lucky you didn’t squash the horny furball.
I betcha the cat will come back, and when he does, make sure his pills are gone shortly thereafter. Cat spray works wonders to depreciate a home’s value, both intrinsically and economically.
silenus is right about the food. Get the sloppiest, smelliest, wettest cat food you can think of and put it in several easy-to-watch locations. At night (presuming he’s out for a screw), you might be able to hear his yowl and triangulate on him.
We have four indoor-only cats. Only one of the boys is brave enough to even want to go outside, so he’s all we have to worry about. One of our Siamese will occasionally romp under supervision in our back yard during the summer, then scurry back in whenever so much as a cloud passes over. The other two have seen coyotes and fox up close, and I think they’re generally satisfied with their lot in life.
Posters with pictures of the cat are also helpful in these situations. Good luck.
My two were raised in a Brooklyn apartment for four years of their life, so when we moved into a house in Virginia, my boy THOUGHT he wanted to go out a couple of times. He tried. Got lost for 24 hours each time (the worst moments of my life), and when he came back after the second time, he’d apparently had enough of the outside world. He does want to go outside sometimes now, but it’s more of a “I will step onto the back porch, just so I can show you that I can, and then I will walk right back into the house.”. We’ve never had to worry about him escaping since.
My girl is afraid of everything, including air, so she won’t even go near the door if it opens. She’s easy.
Our indoor cat, Great Whore Jezebel, doesn’t even try to go outside. In fact, when an exterior door opens, she runs the other way. She’s perfectly content to rule our third floor.
Your roommate is a dumbass. The cat needs to be spayed. His excuse (personality change) is baseless.
He also needs to be responsible for his animal. Whenever he leaves the house, he should put him in his room and close the door. It is not fair to expect others to be in charge.
Most of my indoor-only cats have been afraid of the opening to the Great Unknown and not tried to escape. With the adventurous ones, any time I’d be in the open doorway and see them approaching it curiously I’d roar and stamp my feet, spooking them into flight. This got the message across that such doorway was a Forbidden Thing.
[Nitpick]Actually, no, the cat does NOT need to be spayed. He needs to be neutered, fixed, desexed, but not spayed.[/nitpick]
Tomcat spray is unbelievably foul. It’s not just urine, it’s musk or something as well. Some whole males never spray indoors, but I sure wouldn’t want to take a chance. That spray is just about impossible to remove. As for personality change…I think that a neutered male is much better natured than a whole male. He’s not horny, but he can still be quite affectionate. Our male neuter is quite affectionate to our two (spayed) girl cats, he just doesn’t want to have sex with them, that’s all. I’m afraid that my Siamese girl still will put the moves on any male she encounters, despite her being spayed. If she could, I’m sure she’d change our porch light from white to red. It’s embarrassing to watch her try to seduce any man who walks in the door, but also amusing.
Dewey is always trying to escape, and he’s taught the little furball to try to escape, too. I just keep an eye on them when I go out the door, is all. He’s snuck out a few times, but because I’m watching I’ve always grabbed him on the porch (except the one time he got halfway up a tree, chasing a squirrel!)
I had the exact same thing happen with my indoor only cat only about two weeks or so after we brought him home from the animal shelter. I was especially worried because I live in the middle of the city and it isn’t exactly the most hospitable environment for a cat, but we put out food and put up flyers and he made his own way home about 18 hours later or so. As an aside, is the cat micro-chipped? We got our micro-chipped so there was at least some peace of mind knowing that if he gets picked up and taken to a vet or shelter they will immediately find out who he belongs to.
I thought there was a component of male cat urine that never breaks down…or has a halflife of 6000 years or something…but my google foo is not backing that up.
We have 4 indoor cats, and every once and a while, one of them will slip out the front or back door, but they don’t go far. Most of the time our auto-pilot dance move through the door works in keeping them at bay. It is a combination of shoving them back away with your foot while “hissing” at them by blowing air loudly through your teeth. Seems to work pretty well for us at least. Ymmv.
When I lived in Bucheon, the dude in the apartment just above me (he was on the 4th floor) had a nice kitten. The dude forgot to close his window and the kitten fell asleep on the ledge. Poor thing rolled over in its sleep and fell out. About 1/2 a story below my window was a ledge. The kitten must’ve landed on it and while we were looking all over the place for it, the kitten came through the back door of the building and was waiting in the lobby for a friendly face to come along.
I’ve heard that if you put up lost notices it’s a good idea to have “Needs Medication” in your description, even if it isn’t true. Something about how it deters people who might otherwise want to keep the (free) friendly cat they found.
Don’t forget to call the local animal shelter/humane society/animal control/whatever to see if anyone turned him in to one of them or took him in and reported him found.
