<p>zoosermom, I wish you the best of luck getting you cat back home. A year ago next month our 2 year old never been outside female cat got outside. We did not have a happy ending. I really hope that she comes home to you soon safe and sound.</p>
<p>Zoosermom we cross posted. </p>
<p>I am so glad that your cat came home.</p>
<p>Glad your kitty has returned, safely. :)</p>
<p>I’m glad your kitty made it back home. It sounds as though he had a satisfactory - and SAFE - adventure. Have a relaxing evening now that all is as it should be.</p>
<p>I’m happy she’s back. :)</p>
<p>I just saw this thread and read it beginning to end. Even though I missed the real-time drama, I did experience a shortened version of your angst right along with you. I’m so glad you got her back! Well done!</p>
<p>Thank goodness. The forum crashed for hours and I haven’t been able to log on but I was worried about you kitty so I’m so glad to see all is well.</p>
<p>Our kitty got out of the house when I was out of town on business.</p>
<p>It was probably wise that my H didn’t let me know until she got home safely.</p>
<p>This brought me back to when my dog jumped out of my car at a gas station on a busy 4 lane highway during rush hour. I went screaming down the highway after him like a madwoman. I abandoned my car, with the door still open at the gas station and a stranger picked me up and drove me around looking for him. I found him at another gas station 45 minutes later. I still have nightmares about it.</p>
<p>phew! Happy end! What a relief! I’m soooo happy for your and your kitty, zoosermom! I hope the kids learned a good lesson today.</p>
<p>(I do not know how we managed to keep my cats indoors for all these years with kids constantly in an out of the house!)</p>
<p>cartera - :eek:</p>
<p>Great news, zm!</p>
<p>Just wanted to mention another reason it’s so important to have I.D. tags and microchips, even on indoor cats. Should the animal get out and be hit by a car, a veterinarian can reach you quickly so you can authorize medical care. Sometimes injured animals go untreated if there’s no one standing by to pay the bill.</p>
<p>Your cat will always be able to find home. She was out doing cat stuff, having a great time getting her cat brain stimulated. </p>
<p>One of our cats will stay out all night a few times a year. He just needs to do it. Sleeps the entire next day. Always same routine: he comes to the door, thinks about coming in, bolts and then runs at the door a little after dawn. When he was little and got out, he did revert to being feral - he was a stray - and tried to live under the garage. But it rained very hard, he got very wet and cold and started banging on the door to come in. That was 9 years ago.</p>
<p>His brother took off one night and managed to get hit by a car. Cats don’t understand moving cars well and they get hit fairly often. And he is black. We didn’t realize he got out; he snuck out while we were trying to get the other one in. The next morning I went looking for him and found him crawling back home, pulling himself along the driveway under the cars with his front legs. Trip to the vet, some bandages & pills, and he was ok.</p>
<p>You guys keep tugging at my heartstrings with all your kitty cat stories. Gosh I miss having a kitty…</p>
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<p>Not if coyotes find the cat first. Coyotes keep our neighborhood swept amazingly clean of stray or escaped pets.</p>
<p>Glad this one got home safe.</p>
<p>Lergnom, it’s dangerous to assume that a missing cat will come home on his/her own. Zoosermom was wise to actively and immediately search for her beloved cat. </p>
<p>According to the American Humane Association, “71 percent of cats that enter animal shelters are euthanized. More cats are euthanized than dogs because they are more likely to enter a shelter without any owner identification. Only 15 percent of dogs and 2 percent of cats that enter animal shelters are reunited with their owners.” Unfortunately it is very common for stray cats to be euthanized while owners assume they will come home on their own. If the cat doesn’t return home, the owner might even decide that the cat found a nice new home or “wandered off to die.” Shelter statistics show that there is a disconnect between such assumptions and reality. </p>
<p>OK, I will stand down from my soapbox now!</p>
<p>Zoos, I am SO glad to hear that the cat came home! Unfortunately, my beautiful Miss Kitty did not. We think that she was probably killed and eaten by a fisher or coyote. we did the food, the litter box, the searching and calling, the posters with color pictures. Although a few people called us about the posters, they were not leads to our cat.</p>
<p>Now that we have a happy ending, I’ll share my story. One afternoon I realized I hadn’t seen our timid male cat for quite a while, so we instituted the usual search of the house (you know the kind, where you hunt in every nook and cranny, calling your cat’s name for an hour, all to no avail, and then it suddenly waltzes nonchalantly into the kitchen looking for a treat). Eventually we were convinced he wasn’t inside, and moved the search outside. Hours later the posters were ready to be distributed and I was beyond hysteria and already in mourning (he’s my cat, or, to be precise I’m his human), convinced my shy and placid Ragdoll (a very non-aggressive breed) could never survive outdoors. H suddenly stood up and said “I’m looking outside one more time.” Lo and behold, our kitty was huddled, terrified, under a foundation shrub. He had curled himself into such a tight little ball of fear and misery that he was almost impossible to see. He had never been outside before except in a carrier and had never attempted a breakout before, so I suspect he found himself outdoors quite accidentally and then completely froze in fear, unable to even respond to our voices. My family still talks about my reaction and wonders if I’d be as upset if any of them went astray!</p>
<p>SIGH of relief!! So glad!!!</p>
<p>ZM, I am VERY glad to hear your kitty came home safe and unharmed.</p>
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<p>I am not the biggest fan of outside cats but I am not gonna lecture anyone on it if they let their cat out. I will however share two stories about what happened to me when two of my past cats got out the door.</p>
<p>The first one was Baby I got him from a flea market 9 years ago. He was being given away if you bought a big out cat food. It broke my heart to see him like that, so I bought a bag of food to get him and take him home. About a year later we moved and he freaked out at the new house and bolted out the door as we were coming in. We lived in a small mobile home park and looked all over for him calling him, we left food for him and everything. He did not show to a year later. By the time when did see him he was feral, had been severely abused, but we could not get him to come to use to get him to a vet to fix what had happened to him. We never saw him again after that. And I did not own another cat for 5 or 6 years.</p>
<p>When got Ping a Siamese mix 4 years ago roughly. He was a kitten abandoned by his mother on our property. A year after we got him we rescued another Siamese mix kitten Pong. Oh she had all our hearts even Ping’s. In the early week of May 2009, she became spooked and got out a door when no one was looking when one of the kids was coming back into the house. No one noticed she was gone till hours later. I just figured she was hiding in the house somewhere sleeping. This was something she would do and no amount of calling or looking would draw her out. When I got up early the next morning and she was still no where to be found I knew she had gotten out. We searched our property, called her, cried for her, left food out, put used litter around the house trying to lure her back.</p>
<p>On May 9th of 2009 my husband found her. He had just came home and as he pulled onto our property he saw something on the grassy side of the road opposite of our property. He got out to go see what it was and it was our Pong. Apparently she had climbed a tree in the woods on the other side of the road. She had never climbed anything so high and had no experience. On her way to getting down she must of fell because there was a tree branch in her side and she was dead. But she almost made it home.</p>
<p>So no not all cats back it home safe when they get out.</p>