Charlie isn’t allowed out after dinner, but he snuck through a door left open. He’s been out all night once or twice like this on a warm night, but he’s always returned early the next meowling at the door for breakfast. But not this time.
As a Devon Rex he’s a bit unusual looking. Aside from people that might find him interesting, there had been possums, other cats and foxes around. I was most worried he’d been attacked and was lying somewhere injured.
It was Easter and we had to go interstate. My sister stayed at our house just in case Charlie arrived back.
Charlie was missing for a week before we thankfully found him.
I received a call - someone housesitting a home at the end of our street saw the poster... then saw our Charles-boy sitting on their porch! I pulled the car over and we swapped details. The kind person gave Charlie water and kept him in her shed until my sister could get there and pick him up.
Charlie was very pleased to be home.. and we were so happy he had been found. He was completely well except for being very grimy (perhaps he’d been hiding under a car at some point?), and perhaps a bit thinner. He was totally fine with our other cat, which we had been worried might not be the case if he gotten into a fight.
For us, the things that worked to find Charlie were - 1) posting a ‘lost cat’ notice on Facebook and Lost Pet Finders - this resulted in people giving us great tips of things to do to find him, several of which did the trick! 2) printing a poster the day he was missing and posting it on poles in our street and all nearby streets 3) I kept my phone on and answered every call that came through.
4) neighbours 4) posting in the local neighbour ‘WhatsApp group’ so neighbours could look out for him.
We also conducted night searches at 3 and 4 am, called the local vet and all the pounds repeatedly.
Probably one of most helpful things was to read on Lost Pets about why cats behave like they do. And read success stories from people online and known to me, that their cats had reappeared by taking the actions we were taking. It encouraged us to keep optimistic that we would find Charlie, and focused on actions to make it happen.
