Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

The litter tray

Join our community of cat lovers on the Mumsnet Cat forum for kitten advice and help with cat behaviour.

What to do with this wandering cat?

4 replies

User562377 · 18/09/2023 09:14

Dcat aged 3, lives with us and her sister cat, has done for 2.5 years. All fine.

Recently she disappeared for 8 days. We put up posters, notes on Facebook and through doors.

She just appeared back one morning looking fine and healthy.

We kept her inside for 2 days then let her out because she was so miserable.

She stayed at home for maybe a week then disappeared again for 4 days. She's come back this morning. The weather has been awful here, non stop rain for 3 days. Surely she hasn't been living rough all that time. Last time she went missing was that freakily warm week and she came home when the weather turned colder.

What, if anything, would you do?

We'll keep her in again for a couple of days but does that just make her desperate to escape and not come back? I'm worried that keeping her in makes her hate living with us even more.

When we let her back out we'll put a note on her collar saying she has a home, please don't feed her.

I sort of feel like if she doesn't want to live with us any more there's not much we can do but is that a bit defeatist?

We had a gps tracker thing a while back but she's quite a small cat and she hated wearing it. We were always hunting round the gardens when she'd managed to wriggle free of it. But we might try again with that to see if we can work out where she's going.

OP posts:
Clarich007 · 18/09/2023 13:10

I understand , my cat is exactly the same.
He's been doing it for 7 years though, and it's so much part of his routine now that we don't turn a hair anymore. At first we were frantic and did the leaflets, FB, etc.But now it's normal for him Luckily he goes to the same spot about a quarter of a mile away.
We've set up a WhatsApp group too, so I usually know where he is.
That doesn't help you though. Some cats are just like that. Your comment about her not wanting to live with you any more
really rang a bell with me though I have had the same thought.My cat obviously prefers living with the students down the road.
I don't know the answer.We just keep fetching him back and feeding him up ready for his next adventure

Endeavormorse · 18/09/2023 13:14

I have a tracker on my one year old. He got stuck in someone's garage just yesterday for a few hours and I could go straight to the house where he was stuck.
He was stuck on another garage overnight a few months ago too. It's worth it for peace of mind.

Endeavormorse · 18/09/2023 13:15

Tractive now do a smaller model for cats. Mine is just used to it now.

Crzy · 18/09/2023 13:20

Post in your neighbourhood group on fb and on nextdoor and have a peak to see if anyones posted about her. By pure chance I saw posts of ours with someone asking if our “shy” with strangers (obviously not as shy as we thought Grin) was owned by anyone or a stray as he’d come yowling for food when they were cooking and made himself comfy on their bed! I wondered where he was disappearing to really worried me till I realised he’d suddenly started visiting 2-3 people and we now have an arrangement that one who’s an elderly old man can offer him treats but must send him back on his way Grin got him a I have a loving home please don’t feed me collar and now he comes in within an hour or two of being out acting all pissy with us as clearly we’ve ruined his fun!

New posts on this thread. Refresh page