08/22/2026
***Disclaimer— not my story but I have approval from kitties mom to post. It’s an important one to read all the way through to understand what’s happening to your kitty when it goes missing. This story has many extra circumstances but the overall message remains the same as I know you may think that your kitty will come to you and know who you are, but in these circumstances, your kitty is in survival mode and you need to realize normal circumstance, expecting behaviours are not in play***
Carla Chico Hesch Rayner
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Hi everyone. I wanted to just come on here and post about a recent experience we had losing our cat.
There were several high stress issues that happened before the disappearance.
1) We adopted a younger cat who wants to be friends with our old guy but our old guy appears skittish now around him and runs away. Sometimes he won’t come in the house if he sees the other cat.
(We now understand that this new cat has taken away our old cat’s “safe space”)
2) We evacuated and had to put our cats into safe keeping at a vet clinic for a few days. This meant drugging and caging (quite scary for them)
3) When we brought them home, half the family was still away for another week, one of which was the constant care giver, feeder and gate keeper of indoor/outdoor time. This shifted schedules and once again changed the “safe” feel of home.
4) There was still days of smoke in the air
Our guy left one morning and didn’t return for days. We have a massive amount of coyotes in our neighbourhood, more than usual due to wildfire displacement. We assumed the worst.
We did all the things, posters, social media, canvassing neighbours, litter box out, door left open even all night, checking trees, calling him, walking trails, multiple neighbourhood walks throughout the days and nights with flashlights.
We assumed he was gone.
Yesterday at dusk we went out again with the car to drive around and look. We had honestly given up and thought for sure he was gone. Then we spotted a cat far away in a neighbours field. We recorded him on our phone and zoomed in to confirm it was him but the picture was too grainy to really tell. We asked the neighbour for access to his backyard to see if it was our cat.
It was.
Here is the part I want to share…
Our cat didn’t know who we were. He is a friendly cat by nature so he didn’t run away but he didn’t respond to our faces, our voice, our touch, our smell. He was vacant. He was traumatized. He was lost. For days he wandered just four properties away and didn’t know where he was. 🥺
We brought him home. He was filthy. So thirsty, so hungry, so distraught. We made him a “safe” confined space, dark and quiet in my daughter’s room. No cuddling, no smothering. Just let him be. And he slept. And slept. And slept. I think he stayed awake all those days he was missing.
I haven’t seen him yet today but he definitely had a mental breakdown out there. He likely has feline dementia and the stress of not having a safe home to come to was overwhelming. It made the outdoors seem safer than our home, which is heartbreaking.
We have a plan to reset him. Keep him indoors, confined to just one space, alone without the other cat and access to the catio only. He won’t be going outside freely anymore. We are grateful for his return and for being given the opportunity to make his golden years safe and loving. It was easy to brush off all those past stressors as just things he will deal with. He obviously didn’t and couldn’t deal with them. We learned from this and hope other cat owners will take this bit of information to heart and avoid similar situations.
If your cat is missing and some things like I mentioned above have happened to disrupt his/her safe space, do not assume he/she will just return home as usual. Go out and hunt for them. They may be just a few doors down, disoriented and confused, scared and alone. 🥺
Thank you
