Advice on my roaming kitten please.

[TitsalinaBumSquash]

I have 3 Cats, 2 are 8 month old sisters and 1 is a 4 year old miserable old woman.

Never had a problem with any of them, they're fairly typical cats, the eat and come and go as they please, all friendly and healthy. They enter/exit the house via the cat flap and eat a mixture of dry/wet food. The kittens leave the big Cat alone and she leaves them alone.

However the past 2 weeks one of the kittens has been roaming quite far, we've been getting calls from people who have her I their garden/house crying non stop outside windows or doors, being quite a tiny thing they think she's lost and call the number on her collar. 4 calls today I've had after DP rescued her yesterday!
I've got her back again (from a few roads across from us, over a main rd) and I've got them all shut it for the moment. She's been very distant and not do friendly as she was. No change in the other cats.

Does anyone have any idea what's happened and how to rectify it? I'm worried about her straying and not finding her way home or getting hit by a car. Any advice or suggestions?

Has she been spayed? If not she could be in season.

IMO the only way to keep your cats safe is to have entirely indoor-only that you entertain yourself, or a cat enclosure. Not intended to sound snarky but 'surprise' litters did nothing to deter allowing cats to roam..Now 30% of cats in my state are FIV+ :( Not to mention the disturbing stats on native wildlife, harassment of other domestic pets and significantly early deaths from dogs/wild animals/roads/eating the wrong thing/losing a cat fight, etc, etc.

Female cats can reproduce from as young as four months, from the behaviour you describe she is most likely on heat/about to enter heat. Google FIV and also know having kittens as a baby stunts growth significantly. :(

I hope she's just exploring! Best of luck. Please don't take my comments as a criticism, it's just working in a cat shelter really opened my eyes. Obviously this is my opinion only. :)

Maybe she wants to be an only cat and has been interviewing prospective owners .

I assume they are neutered as they are 8 months and not waddling around craving gherkins and crying because a moth flew to close .

I just dont know. Maybe she is an only cat at heart. Could you enforce a curfew? ours wants to go out the more we let him out.

Yes all 3 have been done.

Still got them all in, our new next door neighbours have a cat, I wonder if it's that? Also we had the garden re done, maybe she doesn't recognise it anymore?

Cats don't really like change, ours gets mardy if we change the furniture round or put a picture up.

So perhaps it's the change of garden and the new cat she doesn't like. They should get used to each other eventually.

My cat used to behave a bit like this. She had been spayed but the idiot vet didn't do it properly and left some ovarian tissue behind. This meant that she still went into heat. Eventually, she had to have hormone injections to stop her coming on heat.

If you get Tom cats hanging around I'd get her checked out.