Kitty Come Home!
Searching for a lost cat is a long, difficult, and specialized process.
Written by: Erin Harty, Associate Editor @ Vetcentric.com

"He zipped through the door as I was coming back inside with his newly cleaned litter box. I had gone outside to hose it out and scrub it, and was coming back inside when he bolted out," she explained. "I dropped the litter box and took off after him, but since I was barefoot, I wasn't quite fast enough. He ran under some shrubs, and I tried to grab him, but he slipped right by me. He was determined not to be caught. He then ran into the neighbors' backyard, and that's where I lost sight of him."

Ms. Bankston, a student at Clemson University in South Carolina, was horribly upset. She had just adopted the 7-year-old tabby -- a strictly indoor cat -- from a shelter in February. She was worried that he wouldn't be able to find his way back home, since he had only lived there for a few weeks.

"I was devastated after I had searched the neighborhood for him and still couldn't find him. I remember thinking that I wouldn't see him again. I hoped and prayed that he wouldn't get attacked by dogs, or hit by a car," she said. "I kept trying to remind myself that cats are renowned for their tracking instincts, and I thought of the movie The Incredible Journey where the family pets travel half way across the country to find their owners."

Fortunately, Gator's story has a happy ending. "Almost a week passed, and still no cat. I had pretty much given up on him," Ms. Bankston said. But one night, as she was turning off the lights and getting ready to go to bed, she heard some faint meowing.

"Not wanting to get my hopes up, I assumed it was my other cat, Scouty. I called out Scouty's name, and the meowing got louder, but it sounded like it was coming from outside," she said. "I excitedly threw open the door, and Gator ran into the house almost as quickly as he'd left."

Ms. Bankston was lucky -- other than being a little thin, Gator was none the worse for the wear. And he was home, which is what mattered.

Jennifer Britton of Philadelphia, Pa., was not so lucky. While she and her husband, Christian Hunold, were on vacation, their cat sitter managed to allow three of their four cats to escape from their apartment. One cat was safely recovered at the end of the day. But despite months of diligent searching, the two others -- Mowzy and Bug -- were never found.

"It was absolutely wrenching ... [and] still is. We are serious cat people, and the loss has been difficult to deal with," Ms. Britton said, adding that just recalling the experience brought up the same feelings of panic and desperation.

"Even 10 months later, Christian and I miss them terribly and remain very saddened by the loss. Not knowing what happened to them is the hardest part," she said.

A different approach

Losing a pet of any kind is a harrowing experience. If it's your dog that is lost, at least, the pet-retrieval strategy is pretty simple -- get out in the neighborhood with some treats and call your dog for all you're worth.

When it's your cat that's gone missing, however -- especially an indoor-only feline -- it can be particularly difficult. When they are frightened, as most indoor cats will be when suddenly in unfamiliar surroundings, cats hide. And they hide well, cramming themselves into the tiniest and most inconspicuous of spaces and staying there without making a peep.

To make matters worse, few kitties will come running when you call "Come!"

Finding a lost cat takes perseverance, patience, and planning, and oftentimes the strategy can be frustrating to owners who want to get out there and find Fluffy now ... and who lose hope when they can't.

Kathy "Kat" Albrecht, a retired police officer who spent 10 years as a bloodhound handler, knows all about the intricacies of finding missing people -- how a search for a missing Alzheimer's patient is different than the search for a missing hiker, for example. But after one of her bloodhounds went missing, she realized that almost none of that knowledge has been applied to the process of finding missing pets.

Through her research and a fledgling, non-profit search service organization called Lost-A-Pet Foundation, for lost pets based in Clovis, Calif., Ms. Albrecht has discovered that there are distinct differences in the way various pets behave when they're lost. And, accordingly, the methods used to search for those pets vary widely.

For cats, the primary differences are between indoor-only and outdoor-access cats, Ms. Albrecht said.

Outdoor cats (or indoor cats that are given some access to the outside) are likely to go missing if they're injured or trapped, so searching might focus on neighbors' garages, for instance, or careful scrutiny of nearby hiding places where an injured cat might seek shelter.

Other possibilities for explaining the loss of an outdoor cat include: theft; someone assuming that the cat is homeless and "rescuing" the animal; attack by wildlife (particularly by coyotes); or intentional removal (or killing) of the cat by a cat-hating neighbor. It's also possible that the cat might have run off because of a perceived invasion to the cat's territory (such as a new cat in the family), or that the cat climbed into someone's car for shelter, only to have that car driven away.

With indoor-only cats, the scenario is different, Ms. Albrecht explained. These cats are suddenly displaced from their familiar territories, are thus frightened out of their wits, and usually have only one thought in mind -- HIDE! (Followed by a second, and equally powerful, thought -- KEEP QUIET AND DON'T MOVE!)

Of course, this is news to the distraught owner who is calling frantically for a missing cat and expecting it to come running and jump into her arms.

"Be aware that the cat is very likely hiding nearby, and it's not going to meow," Ms. Albrecht explained. "Most likely, it won't break cover."

Not all indoor cats will behave the same way, she said -- a particularly gregarious indoor cat might only hide for a few hours, and then come sauntering back to its own front door. But a skittish cat that hides every time a stranger comes in the house is going to do its best to stay hidden.

According to a survey Ms. Albrecht conducted of 30 owners of lost or previously lost cats, 53 percent were found within a one-house radius of their owner's home, and 56 percent were hiding in fear and not immediately visible when they were found. Only 18 percent were found on the first day, but 59 percent were found within two weeks.

Many lost cats go unfound -- the national return-to-owner average for missing cats is only 2 percent, meaning that 98 percent of the cats turned into shelters are never reunited with their owners -- because people just don't know how to search for them effectively, Ms. Albrecht said.

Newspaper ads or "lost cat" posters, measures commonly recommended by local SPCAs and shelters, might help ... but the chances of anyone spotting your ad or poster and also spotting your frightened and hiding cat are slim.

"Shelters are not in the business of looking for missing pets -- they don't know how or where to do it, because they've never gone out and done it," she explained.

Tips from the trenches

The night Gator disappeared, Ms. Bankston did some quick research online, and went right into action. Her biggest worry was that the cat wouldn't be able to find his way home, as he was unfamiliar with the area. So she put out an open can of tuna, hoping that the smell would lure Gator home. She also left out his dirty cat litter and some of her dirty clothes, so he would recognize the house as his own.

"I was willing to try anything," she said. "I got very little sleep that night, because I woke up every hour and went to see if he'd returned. No luck. It was aggravating because every time I would go back to sleep, I would dream that he had found his way back."

The next day, Ms. Bankston made fliers and distributed them throughout the neighborhood, and talked to any neighbors that she saw. After a week of searching, she had just about given up hope ... and then Gator appeared at her door of his own accord. Presumably, he was close by and eventually worked up the nerve to leave his hiding place and head home.

When Ms. Britton's cats disappeared, she and her husband stayed up the entire night calling them, assuming that the pair were within their center-city block, which was almost completely enclosed except for a narrow gate on the corner of the block that was opposite from their home.

"When the morning arrived and there still was no sign of them, our panic grew," she said. "Christian and I stayed home from work that day and went knocking on doors all around the block showing pictures of the cats and asking whether neighbors had seen them, and whether we could look around in their back yards for them. Nobody had seen them.

"We were very distraught by this time. It was looking more and more like they'd gotten out of the block -- which meant they could be anywhere in the maze of city streets and alleys. There literally are hundreds and hundreds of places for cats to become invisible."

By the third day, Ms. Britton and her husband printed fliers with the cats' pictures and posted them on every corner within three or four blocks of their apartment, at local laundromats and supermarkets, and at all the area veterinary practices. Ms. Britton also stuffed them in all her neighbors' mailboxes.

Ms. Britton also consulted an animal communicator, who gave her ideas on where to search. And they alerted the local animal shelter, which was just a block and a half away, and made nearly daily visits for two months to see if the cats had been turned in.

Neighbors did spot one or both of the cats at several times during the weeks-long search, and Ms. Britton and her husband would focus intently on areas where the cats had been seen -- peering under bushes and cars and through fences, picking a few likely hiding places and spending some time there, calling and waiting.

A local woman who routinely fed stray cats thought she had seen a black-and-white cat that looked like one of theirs, so Ms. Britton and Mr. Hunold added a "stakeout" of her house to their routine.

Mr. Hunold, a political science professor at Drexel University, had the summer off from teaching, and would search during the day, while Ms. Britton, coordinator for academic programs in Drexel's international studies and modern languages department, would search at night after she got home from work.

"We would go out for about an hour at a time, every few hours, and systematically search every street in the neighborhood, within a growing radius around the apartment," she said. "I'd do a last walk around the neighborhood between midnight and 1 am, then catch a few hours of sleep. Then I'd get up around 3 or 4, hoping that as the city became quiet after bar-closing time, there was a chance I would see one or both of them, assuming that by now they'd be on the move in search of home, food, and water. I'd start the morning with a walk around dawn, and then head to work."

And then there was a ray of hope.

"After two weeks, I actually caught a glimpse of Mowzy, but it was from 50 feet away, and she immediately slipped under a gate and disappeared. I waited and called her for hours at that location, hoping she'd come out for me, but no luck," Ms. Britton said. "As you can imagine, Christian and I had hardly eaten or slept since Mowzy and Bug were lost, and we were heartsick and exhausted."

After sighting Mowzy, they tried to help her find her way home by filling a plastic grocery bag with their other cats' used litter, poking a hole in the bottom, and making litter trails from a couple of different locations back to their apartment.

The couple also borrowed a humane trap from their veterinarian, and set it up in the cat-feeding woman's courtyard. They caught a couple of feral cats, but not their own.

They continued to refresh their fliers and stage their daily searches, but as the weeks passed, their hopes grew dimmer. By the fall, they finally stopped searching.

Mowzy had epilepsy and required daily medication, so Ms. Britton feels she has almost certainly died. "It's difficult to imagine Bug being brave enough to join another family, but one never knows. I am really hoping that things will turn out favorably for him, though," she said.

A long, hard road

If your inside cat goes missing, "you just need to gear up," Ms. Albrecht said. "This is going to be a long process."

The biggest hurdle is often discouragement -- after a few days, owners lose hope.

"Too many people just think they're gone," Ms. Albrecht said. "Try not to get tunnel vision, and think, æOh, my cat is dead.' Keep a positive mental outlook. Understand that your cat physically is outside right now."

In many cases, the cat is within a stone's throw of home, and so well-hidden, you might have been standing three feet away, looking and calling, none the wiser that the cat was hunkered down and too afraid to respond.

Ms. Albrecht recommends many of the usual cat-searching tactics -- checking shelters, putting ads in the paper, and so on. Microchips and collars with tags are also important -- although they won't help find your pet, they will help identify it if and when it is found, she explained.

Collars and tags are especially important on indoor-only cats, she said. "Nobody thinks [losing a cat] will happen to them, but invariably, it does. That's precisely why you do need a tag," she explained.

When searching, don't expect that your cat will come to you -- your cat is frightened, and instinct tells it to hide and keep quiet, Ms. Albrecht said. Instead, concentrate on physically looking everyplace your cat could conceivably be. This includes in your neighbors' yards and garages, under their porches, and so on -- don't just ask if your neighbors have happened to see your cat; ask them if you can go and inspect yourself, she said.

The most effective way of finding a lost cat is a humane trap, Ms. Albrecht said, and her group has pioneered its use for finding lost feline pets. The wire cages are baited with food and have trip mechanisms that lock cats inside. They're often used for catching feral cats, and are just as useful, but underutilized, for capturing wayward house cats that are frightened and have, for all intents and purposes, become feral.

Ms. Albrecht's Web site details the story of Sage, an indoor cat that was lost for 27 days and happily recaptured with the use of a humane trap. The site also chronicles the saga of Suzy, an outdoor-access cat that was lost outside the vet's office, and finally recovered almost two months later.

"What really made the difference in this case was that [Suzy's owners] did not give up! They were persistent and willing to continue to search for Suzy in spite of the fact that she had disappeared over two months ago," the site reads. "If your cat is lost, do not give up hope! Be aggressive in your search efforts and above all, believe !"

For more information:

Visit Lost-A-Pet Foundation for more of Ms. Albrecht's insights on finding lost cats, and information on local resources.

How to Find a Lost Cat or Dog , from PetRescue.com

Searching the Web for Lost Pets

Lost and Found: Thanks to New Technology, Lassie's Coming Home

*Article courtesy of VetCentric.com
Originally published December 01, 2005
Written by: Erin Harty, Associate Editor
For more information on this article, please visit http://www.vetcentric.com