Originally Posted by widebody911 (Post 8346525)

Just a quick update...



I took the afternoon off on Thursday to try and look for the cat. Ineffective, but I scored some points for at least trying.



No sign of her on Friday and Saturday. Wife printed and handed out more flyers, made several trips around the 'hood.



Saturday night we decided to leave the back door of the garage propped open a schmidge just in case the cat came by and wanted to at least get indoors, and my wife put tuna out in "strategic" (meaning 'random') places in the yard. I don't know that it did any good, but the rest of the outside cats were grateful for the tasty snack; all of the offerings were gone in about 30 minutes.



Sunday morning at about 5:30 my wife gets up to check the garage to see if the cat is in there. She actually was, but my wife made the tactical error of going in through the house-garage door and not closing off the escape route, and fwoom the cat is gone again. At least we knew she was still a going concern. No sign of the cat for the rest of the day.



Last night we left the garage door open again, but @ 0430 I crept barefoot around through the yard around the back of the house and sealed off the the potential exit. It was for naught, as she wasn't inside this time. The wife gets up and comes out to the garage as I'm looking under the cars for the fugitive cat, and one of the other inside cats escapes from the house into the garage; I think this might drive home the point about paying attention to leaving doors open. FWIW, I already have spring hinges on all of the swinging doors that lead to the outside, specifically for this reason.



A little while later, my wife is sitting at the kitchen table, looks up, and there's the damn cat chowing down on the vittles left behind on the back step. The cat bolts as soon as she goes towards the door. A little while later my needs to go out to the garage, but instead of going through the inside door, she goes around the back of the house, and sure enough the cat is inside. She locks the door and the game is over. The cat is in good shape other than some burrs she picked up in one of the neighbor's yards and being a little hungry from missing a few meals.



I honestly didn't think we'd ever see this cat again. Like I learned with countless ex-girlfriends: if you have to trap them and lock them up to keep them from running away, they probably really don't want to be there.

Originally Posted by SiberianDVM (Post 8346839)

You did well to get her back in.

I once had a cat get away from us while in my vet clinic. It managed to punch ceiling tile out and get up into the upper space. It took us a month to catch that one. No telling how many cat turds it left up in there; thankfully it was a rental space. :)

Originally Posted by widebody911 (Post 8346860)

Originally Posted by lane912 (Post 8341143)

wait-
put some food out
wait-

it's a cat-

Originally Posted by nostatic (Post 8347334)

I read an interesting article by a vet that talked about the fact that cats are by nature solitary hunters rather than pack animals, so of course they really don't want other cats around as they are competition. That said, I've always had a multi-cat household and since ours are indoor-only, at some point they make peace and become best buds. Probably because they've given up hope and find the free food and warm place to poop too convenient...