Two and a half weeks ago, my ex-feral indoor-only cat escaped the house we were staying in while our house was being fumigated for termites. My partner and I have been searching for her ever since, but I wanted to run everything by the group just to make sure I’m not missing anything.
About the cat: she is a 2.5 year old spayed female who lived outside as a feral under our house for the first 1.5 years of her life. We trapped her and had her spayed when she was a juvenile, but by that time she seemed too feral to keep, as we had done with her brother, whom we had managed to trap earlier. We fed her and her mother outdoors until one day we earned her trust enough to let her inside, and she never left (until now). I’m mentioning that she is an ex-feral because she is shy and unlikely to approach strangers.
The house/area: while our house was being fumigated, we stayed in my partner’s relative’s house about 36 miles (58 km) from our home, along with our three other cats. The area is a small town, surrounded by agriculture, but it sees a lot of activity from morning to night. Our cat escaped our first night there by climbing through a window where the screen wasn’t secure in the frame (I had inspected the windows in the room, but I missed this).
We didn’t realize that our cat had escaped until the next morning. We searched around town and posted fliers right away. Because our other cats were still in the house, we closed the escape point window. However, we know that she tried to get back in through this window the following night, based on hearing a thump and seeing wet paw prints on the wall below it. I went outside after hearing the sound, and saw her in the yard a few yards away. She fled across the yard when I called her. A couple of hours later, her brother meowed and alerted me that she was in the yard again. I stayed near the door and called her, but she ran to the other side of the yard and under some foliage. This attempted re-entry the night after her disappearance is the last confirmed sighting of her.
After we moved the other cats back to our house, I remained behind as I work from home and was able to move my setup to the other house in order to wait for her to try again. My partner has been alternating some nights here and some nights at our house. At least one of us has been in the house continuously since her disappearance.
What we’ve tried:
-Calling animal control and shelters
-Posting flyers around town and handing them out to residents
-Talking to the neighbors to check their yards
-Walking the area at night and early in the AM, calling her name or quietly
-Posting on Facebook, NextDoor, PetFBI, PawBoost, Craigslist, and Petco Love Lost
-We have two traps set up near the house, one of which is by the window. We’ve caught three other cats, but not ours. The traps have been baited with sardines, tuna, rotisserie chicken, Churu, and/or Friskies wet food
-We do not have any pet detectives or scent dog handlers in this area. I reached out to one in another state to see if they had any colleagues or knew anyone out here, but they never got back to me.
-I kept reading not to spread their used litter around, so we didn’t do this. However, this area does not have predators that can prey on cats (no coyotes, etc.), so a couple of days ago I tried this out of desperation.
-Our dirty laundry is by the escape point in the traps. We also put the other cats’ hair there as well.
-We set up a trail cam near the window, but we never caught her going near the house. There’s also a camera inside the room in case she does decide to go inside.
-I recorded our other cats’ excited meows while I was feeding them, and I’ve played this recording a couple of times while out walking, in case I could entice her with it.
We had three people call us with possible sightings; two were in the same area nearby, but we’ve been by there many times now at different times of day/night and have only seen other cats. The third sighting was about 1.5 miles away and we were able to see the cat in person and decided it wasn’t her. We haven’t put a trap in the area of the sightings because there are many stray and feral cats around and we will likely end up catching one of them.
Is there anything else we can do? In a couple of days, I will be going back to my house for good, but my partner and I have agreed to come back out here if there is a credible sighting. I don’t want to give up on her, but I feel like I’ve tried everything I can think of, and we haven’t had any clues since the day after she was missing.
