Missing Cats!

Question
Hello,

I really don't know if you can help me at this point but I actually have 2 cats that are missing.  One is back missing from February 2006 and the other one is coming up close to a year now.  She went missing July 1, 2006.  I'm not even quite sure if you can help me since it's been so long since they have gone missing.  I have called all the local shelters and vets to find out if possibly they were brought in.  I've even gotten friendly with the animal control and the facility in my area that recieves animals that may be dropped off there or caught in traps by animal control.  I also constantly keep catfood and water outside, because there is a cat colony that comes and visits my back porch daily, and I would never see them with out food or water.  So you see, I don't know if you can help me or not.  Actually the one cat of mine that disappeared in Feb/06 did come back I kept him in the house, made an appointment for him to get neutered, and my young nephew opened my door and he ran out.  I then never saw him again.  The cat that disappeared in July was not spayed either.  Both cats were accustomed to the outdoors and would always stay in my yard and come in and out of my door through my back porch.  Now from what I understand from animal control, there is big cat colony problem in my neighborhood, and i do see some cats walking around the neighborhood.  I suppose it could be possible that both of them are maybe with another colony or someone is feeding them somewhere else.  As I said before it's very odd because they never showed up in any shelter or animal control facility.  I even went so far to call the highway division of my local police department to find out if maybe a cat was injured or run over and a report might have been made up, and they have not had anything happen in the span of time since they have gone missing.  Is there anything that I am leaving out that I can also do to try and find them?  One last thing I did, I even went door to door asking, and it seems the people in my neighborhood don't care & don't know anything about them.  Please help me if you can!!!!

Answer
Hi Lisa and I'm so glad you wrote me.

The best news I read was that you have kept fresh food and water out since they disappeared!  If you have a colony that comes to eat at your station, you always have a chance that they have become integrated into this colony and DO sneak in to eat from you!

Please tell me what ages your two cats are?  For each, let me know what type of personality they had - friendly enough to let others pick them up or scardy cat types?  

Been there, done this for sure!  I'm going to guess that since you have made friends with the animal control folks, getting some humane traps would not be a problem?

Yes, it is awful looking through the "road kill/injured" book at the shelters, but I always thought it is better to know what happened to lost cats, than to always wonder like we are doing!

Since you are feeding this colony, have you thought about taking the colony on and doing some Trap, Neuter, Release?
This helps cat colonies out the MOST since you are able to trap each cat, evaluate it for health and aggression, use the low cost (or free in some areas for registered colony feeders) to get them spayed and neutered, shots, ears tipped and then released back into the colony.

I suggest this because 1. it would give you a good way to see if one of the cats you could trap MAY be your own!, and 2. This is how us folks who do care, can help reduce the risk of disease (and too many babies) in colonies we feed.

I belive there is always hope, as proven by my trips to another state to live in my car and watch 10 traps every night for weeks on end to see if I could capture my 2 lost "kids" even after 1 1/2 years!  I saw one of my cats come eat where she was "lost" even after 1 year!  Since my lost ones were 10ish (now 13!), there came a time I could no longer risk my mental health (or marriage LOL) and keep traveling to another state for weeks on end to keep doing this - but it took me over 1 1/2 years to get to that point.  In the meantime, I feel like I rescued so many other cats that were desperate in one way or another - health reasons, other people's lost ones that were very thankful I had been trapping heavily, etc...

In the colony you are feeding there is that possible too - you may capture a cat with a microchip that DOES belong to another hurting soul.

I would seriously think about this - asking for 5-10 traps and begin slowly trapping out the colony for TNR purposes - BUT you will have to look very carefully at each cat - since yours have been gone for so long, you know their fur coloring has changed and I'd hate for you to not recognize them!  

Pull out your old photos if this doesn't hurt too much and try to think of any very special marks on your cats so you can look for these when trapping this colony.  Oh Animal Control's LOVE folks like us, as we are helping those poor understaffed (and WAY misunderstood) folks, and helping all the ones in the colony.

Please think about this as an option to see if your cats have become part of this colony, and to help your little colony out too, ok?  Let me know and we'll walk through the how-to's of humane trapping semi-feral and feral cats, how to capture mommies with wee kittens and such.

Bless you for taking care of this colony AND still looking for yours!  Depending on your cats ages, it is still possible they are alive, well and part of this colony or another one.

Thank you Lisa and let me know if you decide to go for it!

Debbie