Kitties gone again.

Ottobon

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So my cats ran off, i haven't seen her for almost a week, but the landlords son spotted her within clear view and 50 yards of the house yesterday, so its safe to presume shes fine. I wish i would have asked him before hand to either come get me if he saw her, or even bribe him to keep her within sight. Still i worry about her, even if shes just gone because shes eating up all the hundreds of rodents running around in our (newly rented) backyard/jungle i still have to worry about rabid racoons and coyotes. I'm expecting she'll come back sooner or later, and if she does i'm totally buying her one of those cat-tracking devices and getting her up to date on her shots, but until then i was wondering if any of you guys have had cats that ran off for literally days at a time just for the fun of it. I mean i'm sure she has plenty of food, but i remember her actually liking being at home. Just hope shes not really lost, rabid, or eaten.
 
One of our cats is obsessed with going outside. He guards the door and if nobody is around he'll find you and be as annoying as possible to get his point across. He got out unexpectedly one time and I went out time and time again trying to find him with no luck. After a few weeks I did the painful thing and just gave up and assumed he was gone. But about a month after he got loose my mom found him on her way home from work. He only managed to get a few blocks away and was feasting on a bird's wing. I never thought I'd see him again. Don't give up hope.
 
I've had a couple of similar experiences - when I was a kid one of our cats disappeared for several weeks, and then out of the blue just leapt over the back fence and wandered in. He did this twice - no idea where he went or what he got up to.

They haven't lost their survival / hunting instincts - so as Kajun said don't give up hope of seeing her again.
 
cats are meant to be outside!

i hate people who keep their cat inside. that's animal mollestation if you ask me
mine's outside ALL the time, she just starts miouwing at the back door when she wants food, and we let her in, if the weather is bad. in good weather, she even sleeps outside
 
cats are meant to be outside!

i hate people who keep their cat inside. that's animal mollestation if you ask me
mine's outside ALL the time, she just starts miouwing at the back door when she wants food, and we let her in, if the weather is bad. in good weather, she even sleeps outside

Err, incorrect. I know of several vets who advise keeping cats inside all of the time, and I believe our RSPCA also advises this. They don't need to go outside, particularly if they've been kept inside their entire life. If a cat has lived inside & outside, then keeping it inside is more difficult, but it doesn't harm the cat in any way. Also means they don't get into fights with other cars, who kill wildlife (which is a problem in some areas).

The last few cats I've had have been kept inside, and they never had any health or mood problems from it. You just feed them different food since they're less active than an outdoor animal (good quality food brands do an 'indoor cat' product).
 
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If mine wants to stay indoors all day, thats fine by me, and if he wants to go outside we let him out. It doesnt matter to him whether he sleeps on a bed or under a bush. He sleeps indoors though, in the laundry on the dirty clothes pile.
 
Our cat (now gone :() once went missing for a couple of weeks, but eventually came back with a huge ass battle scar on his nose. :lol: Cats know where they live. She'll return eventually.
 
Well, my cats go outside all the time. They're indoor/outdoor cats. So they've learned on from an early age where home is and not to wander off too far. If your cat was only indoor, I don't know how well that will go, since I've got no experience.

Before I neutered all my cats (which is what I should have done in the first place) ... they went out in the summer searching for mates. My oldest cat had been gone for more than 1 month. And sometimes they're regularly disappear for almost a week at a time. If your cat is not neutered, that's probably what it's doing. Ever since I neutered them, there's no more running around. They stay much closer to home now and the most any of them have been gone since is about 2 days. But I'm not too worried for them when they're gone for long. They've spent a lot of time outside ever since they were small children, so they know how to take care of themselves, they already know where to go and where not to go.

Mind you, I did have one problem in the past before I neutered my make cat where he had been bitten ... probably by another cat ... and we had to have an operation on him, since we only noticed the wound after it got infected ... we had to give it some antibiotics treatment and it all went to normal. That's when we decided to neuter him as well.

So yeah, when she comes back, you might want to make sure she hasn't been bitten or anything. Just pet her all over (back, belly, legs, tail, every spot, just not the nether regions). She'll get really defensive and violent if you touch her around wounds or anything. It's not rabbies, but nobody likes someone else to be pressing against their bruises, you know what I mean? And it won't be too bad an idea to bring her to the vet when she comes back ... but don't tell the vet anything, they'll just try to rip you off like a bunch of damn thieves. If she's not neutered, might be a good idea to see if she's pregnant, and if not, trust me, it will save you and her a lot of pain and suffering (not to mention money) to neuter her. Plus, she'll stay around the house more.
 
When we used to live in Anaheim we had various cats over the years. The last two were outdoor cats, slept and ate in our garage, rarely came in the house. One of them went missing and never came back. After that my mom never let the one cat outside ever again. We moved to Corona about five years ago and our cat stays in the house during the day and sleeps in the garage at night. If we let it out it will get eaten by coyotes.

So is it still inhumane to keep our cat safely inside the house? I don't think so.
 
Just to clearify she has always been a indoor/outdoor cat, and she is neutered. The only real reason i worry is because we have had her for 11 or so years and the longest she had been gone before was 3 days, more importantly we JUST moved. With that said she had been outside and pretty independent for about the last week before she took off. I'm not at all worried about her being fed, most of the brush outback is thick enough you can't walk through it, and we have everything from huge bucks(dual 4 points, whatever that means) to moles, rabbits, and groundhogs running all over the place. Honestly besides Coyotes i wouldn't worry. The closest (almost only nearby house) is 100-150 meters away, so theirs plenty of uninhabited room out there.

Anyways right now i just keep calling her, as i know that should keep her within reasonable distance all while simultaneously scaring away coyots.

anyways, heres some photos of her cute face.

http://img223.imageshack.**/img223/7766/sallysmalllv7.jpg

http://img156.imageshack.**/img156/3353/sallysleepyhunterqx0.jpg
 
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I never had a cat, but my old boaconstrictor got out of it's cage once in my old apartment. Couldn't find her anywhere and was afraid to say anything to the complex office about it. But finally after a month of being missing, I found her trying to escape into one of the closets in the middle of the night. :p
 
I have a funny story relating to this, except well... it's sort of the opposite of your situation.

In India where my grandparents and relatives live, they have like 5 cats. They're our kitties, we've been taking care of them and their parents and their parents' parents for generations. They keep my grandma company and they're certainly her pet.

One day this orange tiger-lookin fat male kitty came mawing and meowing and wanted a drink. So this just being some new kitty who didn't have any rep with us, my relatives tended to it. Afterwards though, it started coming back hour after hour, fighting with our other cats and stealing the food from them or toppling things and causing ruckuses and giving my grandma a headache. I'm not sure about the full story with that cat but basically it was being a problem kitty and my uncle decided the best thing to do was to drop it off in a region away from home.

He and my other uncle got on their scooter and drove around the neighborhood in circles and waywardly so the cat would be disoriented and wouldn't remember where it was and where the house was. They then drove (in weird directions) towards the hospital in our city (which was about 1.5-2 miles from our house) and dropped it off there. Since it was a stray it could manage out in the real world (it's India... most animals are stray).

So now they were at peace, our kitties were recovering from that trauma and getting fed, and everything was all right...



... till the cat came back 2 weeks later :|

So the moral of the story is: Your cat will easily be able to find its way back and should be safe.
 
When I was a kid, my uncle had this beautiful white cat and I always played with her. Well she got pregnant and in child birth her kids died, she got all pissed and thought we killed them. She ran off and we looked for her for several months, never came back :(
 
LurkerPatrol: That reminds me of a stray cat we used to have hanging around the house. He was as friendly as could be but since we already had too many animals we couldn't take him in. We weren't sure if he belonged to someone so we never took him to the animal shelter. We always made sure to set some food and water out and he was as happy as could be. He'd come and go and sometimes it would be almost a week before we saw him again.

I remember one time I was out in the driveway fixing something on the Disco (imagine that! :p) He had sneaked up on me and meowed at the top of his lungs. Scared the shit out of me! :lol:

Animals really do know where home is. When I take our dog for walks he pretty much ignores everything that isn't right by the sidewalk. But as soon as we get back to the house he's pulling me through the yard to get inside.
 
My cat is really good with going outdoors, actually. He'll go outside and hang in neighboring gardens for a few hours, and come back. Never gone for longer than 12 or so hours.

Hope your cat turns up though. As much as a love my doggies, there's always going to be a place in my heart for my annoying-as-hell, bastard of a cat! :lol:
 
I just remembered how awesome bloodhounds are, and after a quick search, sure as daylight there are pet rescue groups that use the miracle that is a bloodhounds keen scent to find lost pets, I'm thinking about calling one asap, just need to figure out whose in the area, prices, etc.

http://www.lostapet.org/petdetective.php

Also had some good tips about lost cats.

Oh, and i setup a GameCam, so if anything pops up interesting in our yard i should know about it. I used 6 large cans of chunk tuna to leave scent trails all coming towards the house. Yes i know racoons are the first to be attracted, but if the last time the cat came back it was on the same night my dad was complaining about racoons because i through a 1/2 bag of catfood all over the yard.
 
One of my neighbors cats practically lives outside. One night he was on another house's roof..... fell through an open skylight right onto the bed of that home's owner.
 
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