Your indoor cat got out.

The first hour

Do these in order. Do not skip the first one, however certain you are that Kitty got out.

1. Search your own home. Completely. 4% of the cats found alive in the 2018 study were found inside their own home. Of those, a third were behind or under furniture, a third were in the basement, and some were inside the furniture itself, in the box springs of a couch. So: sofa bases, behind and under every appliance, cupboards, wardrobes, the back of closets, the loft, the basement, the garage. Move things and use a torch.
2. Work out how Kitty got out, and mark the spot. The open door, the broken screen, the gap behind the dryer vent, the window that does not latch. This is the hardest minute of the night and it is also the most useful one: everything else here is measured from that spot. The food goes there, the camera goes there, and the search rings are drawn around it. If you genuinely cannot tell, use the door Kitty is most likely to have used and adjust later.
3. Prop the door open if you safely can. Cats do sometimes come back on their own: 18% of the cats found outside in the 2018 study were found right at the entrance to their own home. Leave a light on and listen out.
4. Silence the house and go outside and stand still. TV off, music off. Stand outside for two full minutes and just listen before you search anything. You are listening for a rustle, a bell, one short cry.
5. Search the ground against your own house first. Under the deck or porch, the crawlspace, under the steps, in the shrubs against the wall, under your own parked cars, the shed, the garage, behind the bins. Of the cats found outside in the study, 18% were found right at the entrance to their owner's own house, and cats found outside were most often hiding under porches, under cars or under objects near the house they lived in.
6. Then work outward on foot. Do not drive. You cannot see under a hedge at 20 mph, and Kitty is 39 metres away, not three kilometres.

The night search

Do this every night. Walking the area at night with a torch was one of the four search methods that found cats fastest in the 2018 study. Practitioners add that a cat lying still through a noisy afternoon will often move once the street goes quiet, though that part is field experience rather than a measured finding.

The dark also gives you something daylight does not: eyeshine. A cat's eyes throw a torch beam straight back at you, from inside spaces you could never see into by day.

1. Go out late, when the street is at its quietest. Late night into the early hours. Searching at night with a torch was one of the four methods that found cats fastest in the study, and practitioners recommend the small hours because there is less traffic and noise, both for Kitty and for your own hearing. No study pins down an exact hour.
2. Hold the torch at eye level, beside your temple. This is the part people get wrong. Eyeshine only comes back along the line it went out, so a torch held down at your hip shows you nothing. Use a proper torch, not a phone.
3. Sweep low and level, and move slowly. Under decks, under cars, under sheds, into drains and culverts, hedge bases, woodpiles, porches, crawlspace vents, gaps under fences.
4. Stop every 20 metres. Stand still. Listen for a full minute. Then move on. Go slowly enough that it feels absurd. In the study, searching slowly and methodically had a slightly better outcome than searching generally, and driving around had the worst outcome of any physical search method.
5. Call in your normal soft voice, then be silent for thirty seconds. The tone you use at home for something good, not the alarmed voice. Shake a treat bag or tap a food tin, then stop and listen properly before making another sound. Whether you get an answer depends on the cat, on how frightened Kitty is and on how long the escape has gone on, so keep calling on every trip and treat any answer as a bonus rather than the plan.

Food and a camera

This is what keeps working while you sleep. It is also how you turn a guess into a confirmed location, which is what you need before setting a trap. Set it up tonight.

1. Put it at the exact point Kitty escaped from. The actual door or window, not the front porch because it is convenient. That is the spot Kitty knows and the spot the distances on this page are measured from.
2. Strong-smelling food, and water. Tuna, sardines, or the smelliest wet food you have, on the reasoning that it carries further than dry food. Refresh it daily so it does not go off.
3. Add shelter if the weather is poor. A box or a carrier on its side, opening away from the wind, with dry bedding inside. Cats will use a covered station when they will not approach an open one.
4. Point a camera at it, low down. A cheap trail camera is the best option: infrared, battery, weatherproof, made for exactly this. A doorbell camera or an old phone will do. Mount it low, roughly one to two feet off the ground, and angled slightly down. Lost-pet camera guidance is specific about this, because the standard mounting height for wildlife cameras is set for deer and looks straight over a cat. Frame the food, not the whole garden. Aim it away from the road and away from neighbours' windows.

The neighbours

11% of found cats were inside someone else's house or building, a garage, a shed, a basement. You cannot search those. Somebody has to ask, and that somebody is you.

This is the best-supported step on the page. In the 2018 study, "asked and received neighbours' permission to search their property using a slow methodical search" had the highest success of any specific search method, and speaking to neighbours was among the four fastest. Both beat every kind of advertising.

So knock, rather than posting a flyer through the door. What you actually need is for somebody to walk to the back of their garage and shine a light behind the freezer, and the study's finding is about owners who got permission and searched themselves.

1. Say that Kitty may not come when called. The single most important line. Otherwise they stand in the garden calling for ten seconds, hear nothing, and report back that Kitty is not there. Silence is not evidence.
2. Ask them to look with a torch, and name the places. Shed, garage, under the deck, crawlspace, under the car. A glance from the doorway finds nothing.
3. Ask the second question: can I check anywhere on your property? "Have you seen Kitty" is the question people expect. "Is there anywhere I could check" is the one that finds cats.
4. Ask whether anyone has started feeding an unfamiliar cat. People feed a cat they assume is a stray for weeks without connecting it to a lost-cat flyer, especially if it looks healthy.
5. Say to call at any hour. People sit on a 1am sighting until morning because they do not want to disturb you. Say it out loud.
6. Cover five houses in every direction, then go wider. Half of all cats in the study were found within 50 m. The Missing Animal Response Network reports from its own case files, which are practice records rather than a controlled study, that 92% of displaced indoor-only cats were found within about five houses. Prioritise anywhere with a shed, garage, deck, crawlspace, building work, or a car that has not moved in a while.
7. Go back in three or four days. The shed gets opened, someone starts leaving food out, the neighbour who was away comes home. The second pass regularly produces what the first did not.

Listings and shelters

These are listed after the physical search on purpose, and you should know why before you spend your evening on them.

Under 2% of found cats were found in a shelter, which is the other reason this section is short.

1. File on Petco Love Lost. Free, national, has photo matching, and draws on intake photos from around 3,000 shelters. Upload several clear photos from different angles. lost.petcolove.org
2. Post on PawBoost. Free to post, wide local social reach. pawboost.com
3. Post in local lost-pet Facebook groups, Nextdoor and Ring Neighbors. This is where nearby sightings actually surface.
4. Visit the shelters in person and walk the kennels yourself. Do not just phone. Descriptions get logged wrong, and a "grey tabby" in the system may be yours. Go back every few days. In California a stray cat must be held six business days, or four under some conditions, not counting the day it arrived.
5. Call local vets and rescues. Somebody who finds an injured cat may take it straight to a vet rather than to a shelter, so the shelter list alone will not cover you.
6. Check your microchip registration is current. Right phone number, right address.
7. Put up big signs at corners and junctions. Few words, huge photo, readable from a moving car: LOST CAT, photo, phone number, and the line "may not come when called, please check sheds and garages".

Keeping track of where you looked

After two days every garden looks like one you already checked. People re-search the easy, well-lit half of the radius over and over and never once look in the culvert. Write it down. A notebook is enough.

Resist the urge to widen. As days pass the instinct is to search further out. The evidence says the opposite: search the same close ground more carefully, at a better hour, with a better torch.

Record three outcomes, not two

The blocked list matters more than the searched list. Those 11% of cats found in someone else's building were sitting on a blocked line in somebody's notebook until a person opened a door.

A place does not stay searched. Practitioners report that a displaced cat starts moving after the first day or two, and mostly at night, though that is field experience rather than a measured finding. Either way the cost of re-searching is low. Re-search ring 1 every night, at a different hour than last time. After any credible sighting, re-search everything within 50 m of it straight away.

When you see Kitty

Eyeshine under a deck at 2am. Slow down before you do anything else. If Kitty bolts from here, the next hiding place may be somewhere you have not searched, and you would be starting again.

1. Stop moving the instant you see Kitty.Do not take another step.
2. Get low. Sit or crouch.Standing over a hiding cat is threatening.
3. Look away, blink slowly, speak quietly.A direct stare is a threat signal. Use the normal soft voice, and do not raise it in relief.
4. Angle the torch at the ground, not Kitty's face.You can still see Kitty, and Kitty is not being dazzled by a predator.
5. Wait. Minutes, not seconds. Do not block Kitty's exit.Let Kitty decide you are safe. A cornered cat panics.
6. If Kitty comes, let Kitty come the whole way. Do not reach out.When Kitty is against you and settled, pick Kitty up firmly, hold tight against your body, and go straight inside.

If Kitty will not come

Common, and not a bad sign. Do not force it. Leave food right there, back off out of sight, and note the exact spot. Move the feeding station and camera there tonight.

For a cat that is visible but will not approach, a humane trap is the usual next step. Be aware that the study found no evidence trapping improved the odds of getting a cat back (p = 0.307), so treat it as a tool for a cat you have already located rather than as a way to find one. Shelters, TNR groups and rescues will often lend or rent you a trap, and will give you local advice with it.

Set it where Kitty already feeds. Cover it with a blanket over the top and sides so it reads as a tunnel rather than a cage, put the food past the trip plate, and if you have a spare night, pre-bait it tied open first so Kitty learns the tunnel is safe.

When you catch Kitty: do not open the trap outside, not even for a moment. Cover it, carry it into one small closed room, shut the door, then open the trap and leave Kitty to come out alone. Expect Kitty to hide and be out of sorts for days. Get Kitty to a vet within a day or two even if nothing looks wrong.

If Kitty is somewhere you cannot reach, a wall cavity, under a building, up a tree, do not try to force Kitty out. No hose, no broom, no dog. Leave food at the opening, put the camera on it, and ask your shelter or a trained searcher.

Do not give up at day seven

34% of cats are recovered by day 7. But 50% by day 30, and 61% within a year. A cat found at week six is an ordinary outcome, not a miracle. Displaced cats often stay hidden for days before they start moving and feeding, and that is exactly when the feeding station and the camera start earning their keep.

Keep the station stocked. Keep the night searches going. Keep going back to the neighbours.

Where these numbers come from

Almost everything here traces to one study: Huang, Coradini, Rand, Morton, Albrecht, Wasson and Robertson (2018), "Search Methods Used to Locate Missing Cats and Locations Where Missing Cats Are Found," Animals 8(1):5, a retrospective case series of 1,210 missing cats at the University of Queensland. doi.org/10.3390/ani8010005

The five-house radius figure and the behavioural model come from the Missing Animal Response Network, whose founder Kat Albrecht is an author on that study. Their case files are practice records rather than controlled research, and this page says so wherever it leans on them. The warning about litter trays is theirs too, and the trapping safety guidance comes from Alley Cat Allies and from published lost-pet trapping guidance.

What the study actually found about search methods

The four methods that got cats back fastest, in the study's own terms, were speaking to neighbours and asking them to look, walking the area at night with a torch, getting a neighbour's permission and searching their property slowly, and searching your own yard and immediate area. Asking permission and searching a neighbour's property had the highest success of any single method at 62%. Driving around had the worst outcome of any physical search method. That is why this page is ordered the way it is.

Where we are being careful

• Physical searching did not reach statistical significance. The odds ratio was 1.49 with a confidence interval of 0.97 to 2.29, p = 0.071. That interval crosses 1, so this is a positive signal rather than proof. It is the strongest method signal in the study and it agrees with the distance findings and with practitioner experience, which is why we recommend it, but no single line of this is conclusive.
• Advertising and contacting professionals were associated with worse outcomes, p < 0.001 for both. The authors state plainly that these associations are univariable and do not account for how long the cat had been missing, which almost certainly explains it. It is not evidence that advertising harms. It is a reason not to let it replace searching.
• Trapping showed no detectable benefit (p = 0.307), and neither did identification devices (p = 0.331). The microchip result is not an argument against microchipping: a chip only helps at a scanner and under 2% of these cats reached one. Keep your cat chipped and keep the registration current.
• The study did not separate indoor-only cats from cats with outdoor experience when it analysed search methods, and says so in its own limitations. Only the distance figures are broken out for indoor-only cats. So the 39 m is specific to cats like yours; the advice about which methods work is drawn from all cats in the study.
• The behavioural model is practitioner experience, not a controlled finding. Where a step on this page rests on it rather than on the study, the page says so.
• Recall is a real weakness. 71% of respondents were describing a cat that had gone missing more than six months earlier, with a median of about two years. The authors also note the sample was likely more attached to their cats, and more willing to search hard, than owners in general.

The full evidence write-up, including every caveat and the working, is in the project repository.