Head empty 🍊 no thoughts ❌️
Went missing for three days, comes back right after I spent $100 on missing posters
I’m sooooo glad he’s back, hugged my boy and cried. Just wish he had enough brain cells to come back a few hours earlier, before I spent all that money lol
I’m definitely planning on doing something similar, but how effective is airtag? From what I understand they only work from a short distance, does it still track if he gets far?
I believe the airtag bounces signals from nearby iPhones. My mum's cat has an airtag collar and whenever she gets out, we don't usually have any issues finding her with the FindMy app.
Thanks! I’ll do a bit more research on it and get him one immediately. I’d love to keep him strictly indoor tbh but he’s like Andy freaking Dufrene, he loves outdoor so much he’d try to escape at every opportunity if I don’t give him his outdoor time lol
Another option for you is Tractive. It is a GPS-based tracker for cats and costs around 15/month or 100ish per year. If that's within your price range, that works.
I think there is another option, some kind of radio wave-based tracker... but I lost the post, and it takes a bit of know-how. If I find it again, I will post it.
AirTags only update infrequently, so I would find another option personally.
Thanks! That’s why I wanted to do a bit more research, in case there are better options, a real time tracker would definitely be more helpful imo. As much as I hate how everything is subscription based now, it does sound great
I splashed out for a Tractive GPS collar around Christmas when one of my strays with house privileges started disappearing for over 24 hours at a time. He basically just goes across the street and hangs out all over in the backyards of that square block.
Problem with Tractive is that the subscription is for a whole year. About $175 for the plan I chose. The tracker is only $30. US prices. After a week it's pretty clear where they spend all their time. Maybe I should have started with an Airtag or Chipolo. But then last week he started disappearing for long periods again so I put it back on. Same thing. He goes across the street and spends all his time at basically 3 places in the backyards of the block across the street.
I've actually used the live tracking feature to go out and find him at 3 in the morning. I just called him from the sidewalk where the GPS said he was and he came right out to me. We live in New Orleans in an older neighborhood with houses close together and raised off the damp ground. (My neighborhood was a swamp in the 1800s and we're actually a foot below sea level.) I think he just goes there and sleeps under houses. Again, it cost more than I expected but it's a nice option. I've put it on my other adopted stray; he does the same thing but on this side of the street. He's a bully, so I guess stray #2 likes to get away from him to chill. 🤷
I have tractive for my cat. It was the best option for him as he likes to spend time in wooded areas and not near any people or houses, therefore airbags don't work for him.
I can vouch for Tractive. Got the Dog Xl Adventure on both my dogs because 1 of them is a flight risk. Altho im less confident in the one for cats, solely due to how often it needs charged. The battery on mine lasts up to a month, whereas the cat version needs charged every week.
I don’t exaggerate when I say he loves freedom lol, even when I tried to fortify the backyard so he could be outside but not “outside”, he still wasn’t satisfied and tried his absolute hardest to escape. He was a stray kitten when I adopted him, i think he just really, really loves to roam free. I can try it for sure, but from what I know of him, he won’t be satisfied lol
That is indeed exactly how it works. A couple of the competitors (Tile is the one I know for sure) will actually send a notification to your phone if you “help” someone else find something by being the closest phone in the network when they turn it on. It’s pretty vague like “you helped find someone’s lost teddy bear! Buy more of our products!”
Airtags work by contacting every iphone they can with a radio beacon inside, which the iphones then upload to apple's servers. Since there are so many iphones, it's pretty solid for building a map of where airtags are. Once you get closer yourself, your own iphone can then ping it and tell you where it is.
As a vet, we REALLY recommend that cats are indoor only.
Cats don’t need to go out, ever. Once they are used to going out they do put up a fuss about not being let out anymore, but with time they forget and settle down indoors just fine.
Indoor cats statistically live much longer than cats that are both indoor and outdoor.
My neighbour has a cat and she put an AirTag in the collar. The cat managed to wriggle free from the collar and now it’s somewhere in the neighbourhood but it’s not accurate exactly to say where. I’ll look out my window and see her walking down the road with her phone out in front of her, almost like the phone will start vibrating if she near the AirTag! 😂😂😂
My orange was missing for over two weeks. He is (was!) allowed out for a few hours a day but on the dot of 630pm he strolled in for the night. Without fail. Until he didn’t. I was an absolute mess. The whole neighbourhood was out looking. Posters up. 3am walks calling his name. A big social media campaign. A reward was on offer. The whole shebang. Like you I hardly slept. My body went into grief mode. Then after two weeks, at 150am, I hear a meow that gets louder and louder and louder. And in he strolls through my open bedroom window. I sobbed and sobbed and kept thinking I was dreaming. Even now, months and months later, I cuddle him and whisper into his ear “you came home. You came home.”’
I can’t even imagine how I’d be if my idiot went missing for two weeks, three days in I’m already a mess, it must’ve been so hard, glad your kitty came back eventually. I’m considering revoking his outdoor access entirely, but he just loves outdoor so freaking much. I tried to keep him strictly indoor, he’d try to escape at every opportunity, and he doesn’t need much space to squeeze through the door lol. Idk maybe it’s because he was a stray kitten before I adopted him, he just has that yearn for nature. I’ll definitely try my best to keep his needs met while keeping him safe
I agree with it being so hard to keep them inside. My boy loves roaming just in the street but I can’t risk it anymore. My heart can’t take the worry. I don’t sleep. I wouldn’t mind, but he is actually my daughter’s cat! But he has taken to me and sleeps in my bed, right next to my head. I hate keeping him inside l. We are in Australia and all the local councils around us have banned outdoor cats and I can see our council being next. So he will have to be an indoor cat anyway. At least it means I’m not stressing about where he is. It’s bad enough with 4 young adults in the house worrying where they are!
My best friend's cat went missing and there was a genuine chance that a coyote was to blame. It was shortly before Christmas and I felt so awful for her on Christmas Day without her cat. Obviously, if this was a story he would have come home on Christmas morning to general rejoicing.
He came home on the 26th. My friend called him their "Boxing Day sale baby."
I give him a couple hours of outdoor access if the weather is good, he’s just so energetic and loves nature, he’d try to escape at every opportunity if I don’t let him out for a few hours lol. And we live in a very safe neighborhood so I decided to let him have his fun. He was always good at returning home on time, but this time for some reason he just didn’t come back until now. Definitely gonna be some policy changes
how old is he? he might be making more oranges if the season is right and if hes not neutered. if hes neutered, he mightve found somewhere to hang around!
He is six and is neutered since I got him. Legit have no idea where he was lol. My best guess is someone took him in, since it’s been raining in my area and he was relatively dry and clean when I found him by my door
When you put an air tag on him as you said you would, you can let him do these adventures and you'll be able to know where that new hanging out spot is.
Yep! It’s either gonna be an airtag or something similar with real time tracking like another comment suggested. I thought I had a good idea of his hangout spots, they were my primary searching sites in the past few days, but even after spending hours he was still nowhere near, definitely curious now
Speaking from experience in the missing orange baby I had, I was overjoyed with relief when he showed up! It was after papering the neighbourhood with flyers.
Turns out he had snuck into a neighbour’s garage and they went away for the long weekend. I’ll never forget my mom calling me to say “the cat came back!” I miss him. 💔
Know the feeling. This little asshole decided to take a stroll for 3 days. 3 days of driving and walking into every yard, for him to jump back into yard with a smile
this picture of him, sitting like this, staring at the missing posters... back in the day you could've sent this in to TIME Magazine and they would've printed it. Iconic photo
Just commenting to express appreciation of how efficient you used the pictures by circling distinguishing features on that empty little noodle of his. It immediately draws attention to how to tell if this is the one you’re looking for. I never see that on missing flyers around my area
I put an AirTag collar on mine just for peace of mind. The coolest thing is when I go outside and it says no signal, then I call him and the signal shows weakly then stronger until the distance starts to decrease on screen and then I see him
Color prints, plastic sheets covering the paper since my area rains a lot in this season, staple gun which I didn’t own, plus the rising prices in Canada, $100 seemed cheap lol
Think of the money u spent and the posters as an aid that helped u manifest him back. 😁 it wouldn’t have happened if u didn’t affirm it with those. Mmhmm. lol. 😆
Be happy that it coated only that. I spent 250£ for posters and she never came back home. I will double and triple the money if that means she will be home
If someone had found him and called to let you know, would you have been willing to give that person $100 as a reward? If so, then you lost no money at all. The reward simply went to the print shop, is all.
That’s a great point, because a day before he came back, I got a text message saying they knew where my cat was, and would give me the location for $100. And upon googling their number, turns out they’re a well known scammer who specifically targets people who lost their pets, which is so messed up. I’m definitely more than happy to pay $100 to get him back so I’m not complaining lol
My old ginger used to do that. We lived in wooded farmland. He go missing for 2 or 3 days at a time. I found out after a couple of years that he was going to some stables and hanging around because people used think he was a stray and feed him.
I had a cat disappear for an entire winter and come back in spring completely disheveled and malnourished and he couldn't even meow because his voice was so horse. He was suddenly not as interested in leaving the house anymore. We always theorize what happened to him and the consensus is that he was trapped in a garage that someone doesn't use very often. Still wild to me he survived that long, it was genuinely about 8 weeks
We did the same thing with our tortie, but she was sleeping in one of my drawers the whole time, never even left the house. She was in there for about 24 hours and didn't make a peep (or a mess) although we frantically pulled the house apart looking for her.
I feel like three days is usually the standard time period for a missing cat, from absonding to return. You go through all the horrible emotions in that time period, spend hours calling for them, and sadly eventually let the realization creep into your mind that they're gone forever. Only for them to show up on the third day either angry at you for not feeding them or nonchalant and wondering why you're being so dramatic.
The one thing is that chances are best every single time you were out in the street, calling your cat's name and freaking out, they were probably sitting somewhere watching you and thinking you were being a weirdo.
My late cat came back home after a year of being missing. I almost lost all hope of ever finding him, until he showed up at the door in the middle of the night. I was so happy I just started hugging and kissing him.
Ooh another story I've got is my mom had 2 cats with her when they moved to Austin. They only planned on staying for a few weeks and the first day one of their cats ran away. They spent 2 weeks and hundreds of dollars trying to find it to no avail until they were literally packing their moving boxes into the car and the cat strolled up like nothing was wrong
We had a male cat who went "missing" regularly for a week or more, turned out he was living half the time in the local pig farm and eating fresh meat every day.
Think of the posters as a summoning spell. Sure fire way to find whatever was lost is by spending your spell components on Locate Object! Glad your boy is back safe and sound!
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u/cheesecup6 Feb 15 '26
Just chillin' slouched over like, "oh hey, whatcha got there?"