What to do about a lost cat?
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Take his litter box outside, and other things he will recognize the smell of. Make sure there's water. Cats don't generally range too far but find a place to hide. If he's coming around at 3 am he wants back in. Spend as much time outside talking loudly as you can. If you have a deck or porch check under it. Favorite cat hiding places. Check all the bushes around your home.
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Take his litter box outside, and other things he will recognize the smell of. Make sure there's water. Cats don't generally range too far but find a place to hide. If he's coming around at 3 am he wants back in. Spend as much time outside talking loudly as you can. If you have a deck or porch check under it. Favorite cat hiding places. Check all the bushes around your home.
@Mik said in What to do about a lost cat?:
Take his litter box outside, and other things he will recognize the smell of.
Yeah, he's got the litter box out there, couple of cans of cat food we keep swapping out for a fresh smell, and I even hung up some bags of valerian root tea because he absolutely loves that stuff.
Make sure there's water.
There's a lot of water in a nearby stream, so we walked through there last night.
Cats don't generally range too far.
I really hope so.
We're checking the neighborhood regularly.
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Oh, man. Sorry to hear of this.
Nothing to add other than what Mik said. Our local FB group has a "lost cat" posted about every 10 days, and everyone suggests what he said - food, litter box, other things that are associated with home and its smells.
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Oh, man. Sorry to hear of this.
Nothing to add other than what Mik said. Our local FB group has a "lost cat" posted about every 10 days, and everyone suggests what he said - food, litter box, other things that are associated with home and its smells.
@George-K said in What to do about a lost cat?:
Oh, man. Sorry to hear of this.
Nothing to add other than what Mik said. Our local FB group has a "lost cat" posted about every 10 days, and everyone suggests what he said - food, litter box, other things that are associated with home and its smells.
Any idea about the loss/return rate for those incidents?
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@George-K said in What to do about a lost cat?:
Oh, man. Sorry to hear of this.
Nothing to add other than what Mik said. Our local FB group has a "lost cat" posted about every 10 days, and everyone suggests what he said - food, litter box, other things that are associated with home and its smells.
Any idea about the loss/return rate for those incidents?
@Aqua-Letifer said in What to do about a lost cat?:
Any idea about the loss/return rate for those incidents?
If I had to guess about ⅔ get home.
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How is the little one taking it?
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HO LEE SHIT.
Just after I posted this, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a handful of potato chips and just sort of walked around and went into the basement. It's been years since I've eaten potato chips at home and I seldom go into the basement—it's basically just storage and the carpet's got some weird shit in it that messes with my lungs if I'm down there too long—but I've been kind of beside myself and didn't get much sleep last night.
Right fucking there he was, by the basement window.
It's hard to describe but it's very hard to get from the front door to the basement window, even for a cat. You have to take a very long way around. I have no idea how or why he got there or even that he knew that was home. (I mean yeah, pets aren't stupid but even still.)
I fucked up, though, and opened the door too quickly. He got startled and ran, so I chased him as best I could without scaring him further. Finally cornered him in a neighbor's bushes between their stoop and the side of their house. He was freaked the hell out and did not want picked up, but after a couple of seconds he calmed down enough for me to carry him. Poor guy was shaking pretty bad, though.
My wife came downstairs, found me gone with the basement door open and a handful of potato chips on the ground and wondered what the hell happened.
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I really thought we weren't gonna find him. None of the food we've been leaving out has been touched, and he absolutely loves food. (And there are foxes, possums, raccoons and all manner of other woodland animals outside. Not that they'd attack him—he's still got his claws and he's a big boy—but if they aren't touching the food, and he's not nearby enough to know it's there...)
And in all fairness to the HVAC guys, it's not like they knew he was an inside cat only, but still. Fuckin' hell what an unfun day and a half.
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Hope your cat will feel home again. My fat freaked out by the neighbour who was chopping down a huge tree. He was completely psychotic and never came home again, although he stayed in the neighbourhood. Eventually disappeared without a trace...
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Glad to hear it all worked out so well.
10-15 years, ours (an outdoor cat) vanished. I'd given up after a week, when she returned, miaowing at me from the bushes. Unharmed but a lot thinner. I was initially alerted to her return by the dog doing these crazy twirls - he'd really missed her too.
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Yay!
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Welcome home, brother.
But, for FUCK's sake don't do it again. It's a mean, cruel, and nasty world out there.
Your dad just about had a heart attack.
@Boris said in What to do about a lost cat?:
Welcome home, brother.
But, for FUCK's sake don't do it again. It's a mean, cruel, and nasty world out there.
Your dad just about had a heart attack.
I relayed the message. His response:
"Soz lol. Pets? Treats? You haz food?"
Freaking Maine coons, man.
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@Aqua-Letifer That is great news!!!
