So you decided to let your cat out… or your cat decided that it was going out whether you will or nil. Finding an escaped cat can be a very stressful thing if they don’t return on their own.
A couple of important points to remember are that cats are very rarely stolen. They are also rarely “lost”. Because of cat’s territorial nature they are less prone to wander off than dogs. However, the flip side to that is that most cats will be very nervous and find a safe hiding place when they are displaced from their territory. This can make them hard to find even if they’re just in your neighbor’s yard!
The most important thing to remember if your cat goes missing is that the most effective way to recover them is an aggressive physical search where you (with permission) hunt through your neighbor’s yards looking under every bush and object and up in to every tree. If you find your cat but it’s too scared to come to you, remember that we can loan out a humane catch and release trap that can be loaded with a smelly favorite food and left overnight to help you recover your kitty.
I’m certainly not the expert on this subject, but for more information, here’s a page written by some people who are.
Hopefully you never need this information, if you do, however, there is a wealth of information on how best to recover an escaped cat available right here on the internet.
– Dr. Erika Raines, DVM, CVA, CVSMT