I realise I might regret this post but…

[CurlewKate]

…does anyone else actually like having a cat that wanders? Obviously there’s always the sense of foreboding when they don’t come home-but there’s also the joy of them bursting through the cat flap cockily like an errant flatmate having lived their best independent cat-life for a couple of days,smelling of outside and all “Open that pouch for me.I’d do it myself, but we had more important things to do than evolve opposable thumbs. Where have I been? None of your business.”
Disclaimer. I live very rurally, my cats can get to proper country without going near roads. One comes home without fail at dinner time.The other is the original Cat That Walked By Herself. Both wormed and flead regularly and much loved.

Mine will go out early morning ( about 3am).comes in about 8 am.. eats his biscuits then comes to lay with me... cleans himself for a good 20 minutes.. then spreads out as far as his body can and has a good 4 hours cat nap.... l just love it.

My old girl who is no longer with us liked a wander in her heyday, I also live next to fields and she'd disappear for a couple of days at a time in the summer. I'd see her coming back from my front window, with all the swagger of a lioness prowling the savannah, often with the gift of a field mouse in her jaws for her poor incompetent humans who don't know how to catch their own.

Both my boy cats uses to disappear for days, I ended up not worrying about it. They were just cheating on me with other families! One time I saw a post on Facebook with my cats picture, saying does anyone know this cat?? They were concerned that "she" was hungry and pregnant. I was like, he's just fat cos YOU keep feeding him!!

I was hoping for more stories of happy wanderers…

I have always had outdoor cats (including a previously indoor-only breeding queen who came to me at the very end of her life. I gradually persuaded her that outside is paradise; we got there finally and she lived her last few months very happily exploring the garden in summer).

The 2 I have now are out during the day and in overnight. One is a 'follower'. I was surprised when I discovered how far she actually goes. Follows my son to college and to work (half a mile away). Follows me to work but understands 'GO HOME!'. On one occasion a man sitting on his wall witnessed me telling her to 'go home now and stop doing this'. He laughed.

Cats are the best.

This made me smile and reminded me of the two Ginger Tom brothers that we had when I was a child. We lived in the country too surrounded by fields and one of them would disappear for days at a time, to then roll up with the latest offerings, which included plenty of mice but one year a hare that the combine harvester had decapitated which dc dragged over the kitchen doorstep and dropped lovingly at my DM’s feet 😄

I grew up with a gorgeous siamese who was famous for his roaming (we lived in the country so lots of fields). We used to take the car out searching for him when he'd been gone too long, and he'd come lolloping across the fields and hop in for a lift home.

On numerous occasions after having visitors, we'd get a phone call from a flustered person who, upon arriving back at their home, had discovered a siamese beastie cheerfully sitting on the back seat.

He also once stowed away in a courier van (fortunately, the driver, upon discovering him, went back to his previous location one hour away and my neighbour identified said cat).

We had a farmer next door who, when he discovered rat infestations, used to call us and ask us to send the cat over to sort them all out, which the cat happily did.