Can I communicate with my lost cat? Alternative methods to find him?

My 10 month old cat, Heisen, has been missing for nearly a month. He vanished without a trace on Dec 28th. I'm interested in learning about how to potentially communicate with him or find out if he is even still alive. I've done all the possible physical things. With the huge storm rolling in tomorrow, I'm really worried.

Does anybody here have experience with paranormal pet phenomena? If so I'd love to hear about it. I'm open minded, but skeptical about pet psychics. Are they worth going to? Does anybody here know of any good trustworthy ones in the NY/NJ area? Does anybody offer these kinds of services online? Thanks in advance for any information or ideas to ponder. Many folks have told me to pray to St Anthony.

Is there a wood sided home near you that is painted red?

I got this image as soon as I read the thread title...like a hole in the side of a garage or storage shed that belongs to the house.

But a dark red colored structure. Look there.

I hope you find the Poor little guy.

I'm sorry to hear about your cat and hope you can find him.

I think the best you can hope for is that he's found himself a new 'family' - cats are notorious for that.

I do think prayer works although my belief system is probably different from yours. The important thing is to address your prayer to the right power however you visualise it and, after looking up St Anthony, I think he seems to be the right representative of the power that you need - if you follow the Christian faith.

When my friend lost her dog I sent up prayers every day for a week and she found him at the dog shelter even though he hadn't been there the first time she looked. Will you check the rescue centres again after sending up your prayers?

I'm not trivialising things with the following suggestion and I don't know if it works for animals as well as objects but sticking a pin into the arm of a chair can help to locate something that is missing. Do it with intent, it couldn't hurt.

You might want to put up a picture of Heisen in this thread - there are some people on ATS who might be able to help you if they have an image to work with.

a reply to: Barcs

As Schrodinger explained, cats are in a superposition of existence anyway.

It's probably not lost, it's just un-there.

I think putting flyers all over the neighborhood is the best way to go.

Hopefully he will read one of them and understand how upset you are.

Then he may just come home.

P

a reply to: Barcs

Sorry to hear of your loss Barcs. On my birthday no less! Unfortunately i can't help you but I certainly hope someone here can or at least point you in the right direction.

Wishing you a happy ending to this ordeal and may the forces unknown assist you in your search.

I'd put flyers on poles with a picture, chances are someone adopted him, or........

And praying to a saint, or god won't work, it don't work for coal miners, and it won't find your cat, so don't waste your time praying.

It's always been my experience that if they vanish, something happened. A cat will come back to you no matter what, if it can.

I had forgotten about St Anthony. You can always try it -

Get in the car and start driving around the area. Dawdle. Don't have a goal. And when you get to that zen state, start saying "Tony, Tony, come around, something's lost that can't be found" as a sort of mantra, keeping Heisen firmly in mind, let yourself wander attentively, with no particular intent.

Or you could borrow my next younger brother, he can find anything, it's uncanny.

Is he declawed? Is he an indoor or outdoor cat?

I suggest having indoor cats--they live for a very long time. Unfortunately, if you let him or her out and they haven't returned it probably means that they're gone. I'm sorry to say that. My dad had a couple cats growing up--and they were indoor/outdoor ones (as opposed to mine atm who is only an indoor cat--she's almost 16) and when they 'ran away' they never came back. I know you probably don't want to hear this. I apologize.

The most you can do is think pictures to him or her--they understand that. Try to call out to your cat in your head.

a reply to: rukia

For 80000 rubles I find cat using ancient Russian techniques known only to few wise men in village of Dnpetreskoyetsk.

Cash upfront no kissing.

Oh how heart breaking.....this is sad....I hope you find your kitty. Did you check the vets, animal control, put it on facebook, Craig's list...and flyers on telephone poles. Is your cat fixed? If it's s boy...he may have gone to find a female....good luck...

Put up signs
I lost my cat for 9 months. We put up signs in neighbourhoods away away, and got a call after 9 months and from a couple living 3 suburbs away. He is curled up on my feet as I type 5 years later.

Put them up!

I have found many cats. I have volunteered for pet rescue organizations finding cats. For a while as a hobby I have even read the lost pet adds on Kijiji and when I've seen that someone in my town is completely desperate, has lost what they consider to be a family member, I have gone and found their cat for them. I am a professionally trained wildlife tracker and for a time I tracked for the government. As a long term owner of many cats I understand peoples loss. I find that tracking cats is an intriguing challenge and I have gotten extremely good at it.

I have tried almost everything under the sun to find cats. I have tried psychics, dowsing, thermal imaging, leaving the cat litter box out in the yard, even radio collaring and placing cameras on other cats in the neighbourhood. None of it has been as effective as what I am about to tell you. It is still most likely that you will find your cat. First for reference, let me tell you about Jake and Steve.

Jake - came into a cat rescue facility that I volunteered for many years ago. Occasionally cats would come in that everybody would take an extra special interest in helping. Usually it was because it was such a good natured cat that you would feel extra sorry for it because despite doing everything right it had been abandoned anyway or maybe its owner had died. Jake was very special. Out of the 80 cats a month that would come through the facility he stood out. Handsome, intelligent, easy going, and a unique sense a humour. There are few cats I remember as vividly as Jake.

Anyway, Jake was adopted out to a new home and the next day his new parents called to say that he was freaked out by his new surroundings, ran out the door and had not been seen since. Everybody at the facility was frantic. A little known fact about cat rescue facilities is that they are generally run by a bunch of beautiful, intelligent and well put together kennel techs (veterinary assistants). Its very motivational...so Jake became the most intensive search effort I have ever put toward finding a lost cat. I put my work projects aside, pulled my bike out of the garage and for the next several weeks concentrated on getting Jake back home. Every day I rode around, handed out flyers, talked to neighbours, showed pictures, followed up on leads all over town, etc, etc. I was seen out there so much that a couple of weeks into it one lady asked me if I was homeless. I chatted with her several times after. Eventually, she said "face it, he's gone".

Six weeks after Jake disappeared we found him a block and a half from where he ran away, living in a tarped over, parted out car. This was may years ago and I did many things wrong while searching for Jake. But I did learn many things and I have learned much since.

Steve - was another very special cat that came into a rescue facility. His cool collectiveness, sense of humour, affection and wild cat looks won me over instantly. He had been abandoned in a rental property when his owners had moved on. I made a special point of making sure he was going to be ok and that he was going to end up in the good home that he deserved. He was adopted out fairly quickly and unfortunately I was away at the time and unable to oversee the process. We called the new owners a few days later as we always do to see how Steve was making out in his new home. His new owners let us know that Steve had disappeared almost immediately and had not been seen since. I was like "Oh no, not Steve!!" so the founder of the rescue organization and I hopped into the car and went out to the nearby rural development to see if we could find him.

We found Steve almost immediately. He was crouched down at the end of the new owners driveway, whimpering a bit and not sure what to do with himself. After looking around a bit we realized that the place was not what the owners had hyped it up to be and Steve didn't have access to the amenities that they said he would. Steve came home with me that day. He would stay at my place until I could find him a really good, loving home myself. As it turned out, within days Steven became a permanent member of my family. This bears relevance to something I will tell you about Steve and finding cats a bit later.

The point of these two stories (and many others I could tell you) is that almost always, cats stick very close to where they were lost. Even Jake who had only been at his new home for part of a day was found less than two blocks away after six weeks.


So these are the tactics that you should use when looking for your lost cat....

Buy a good LED flashlight - Twilight is by far the best time to find a cat. Right after the sun goes down and it start to get really dark cats regain their confidence and start coming out of the woodwork. Sweeping a good LED flashlight around as you walk down streets and alley ways you can see a cats eye-shine for hundreds of feet. A cat is nearly invisible behind a flower bed day or night but at night there is no hiding those hyper-reflective eyes. Calling your cats name will cause them to look in your direction - turning their eyes toward you. It will also put your neighbours at ease and you will get less visits from the police. Be sure to walk slowly and run your flashlight over every square inch of the neighbourhood. Check under every parked vehicle and trailer. LED flashlights are amazing for this. I suggest at least a one watt flashlight. I just purchased a beautiful, tiny, 10 watt flashlight on Ebay, delivered to my door for a total of $7 (excluding battery and charger). I can see eye-shine with it for nearly two kilometres. I find the majority of missing cats this way. Its amazing how many cats turn up. In my own neighbourhood I might see a cat once a week during the day. I pull out my flashlight in the evening and I can find eight cats in the first half hour. This should be the very first thing you do to find your cat if walking around the neighbourhood the first day turns up nothing. Invite your friends or family members. Tell them they can keep the flashlights.

Go to the pounds, rescue organizations, and vets - Go there, don't just call. Take pictures with you that you can leave with them. Put your contact information right on the picture. Why the vets? People often take found pets to the nearest vet to get them scanned for an RFID (PIT) tag. Ask them if they have seen your cat and leave them a picture.

Many pounds will put down animals if they are not claimed in a couple of days. Check the pounds every day. Do not take the chance that they are not recognizing your cat over the phone. Ask them to take you through the kennels to check each cat yourself.

Continued...

Continued from previous post...

Little Flyers - Don't bother putting flyers on mailboxes or street poles. Not at first anyway. Most of the community will not see them and there are much higher priorities to deal with first. Instead, I hand deliver flyers to every house. Often when I am walking up to the mailbox people come to the door to greet me. I'm not sure why. Maybe it is because they are intending to ward off advertising deliveries. This is great because it gives me the opportunity to tell them about the lost cat and ask if they have possibly seen it. I get many tips this way. It also lets them know why I am skulking around in the evening and creates a bit of a relationship that might encourage them to keep an eye open. My hope is that my flyer ends up on their fridge door or kitchen table instead of in the trash.

I know that I am going to be handing out hundreds of flyers when I do this so I make and cut out several long horizontal flyers from one standard sheet of paper. I always include the cats name and make it sound like a part of the family. Times a wastin' so I put a crease in the middle of the flyer and hang it half out of the mail box so it is seen right away and not lost among the larger flyers or in the bottom of the box.

Start by delivering flyers to the houses right around you and as/if the days go on work your way out into the surrounding blocks.



Another story about Steve - All of my cats are indoor cats. I have a large run that I have built outside for them. They have all been trained to stay within the six foot fence that surrounds it but a couple of times over the last several years despite me checking on them every few minutes, Steve has for some reason climbed over. The last time he did he disappeared for three days. It was the worst three days of my life. We live near the corner of two very high traffic roads and Steve has no real street smarts.

It was really strange that Steve could just vanish. Especially with me being so tenacious about tracking down cats. I went through the regular protocols, instantly checked the close neighbourhood on my bike and then by foot. I put treats in the run so I could tell if he had returned at all. I printed off flyers, went to the pound and spent every other moment canvassing the neighbourhood. I probably only slept about three hours at a time and was otherwise out day and night. Coming home every once in a while to check the yard, the hardest thing for me was seeing those untouched treats in the run. I left the window ajar so I could hear him wining or pawing to get in when I took time for a nap. As often as I could get away with it I peeked over fences and around gates trying to get a thorough look into every yard nearby. It was so strange that Steve was not showing up. I was checking absolutely everywhere many times over.

Desperately, I decided to try something new. Every half hour or so, starting at two o'clock in the morning when traffic noise was at a minimum and the calm night air allowed sound to travel for long distances, I would climb up on the roof of my garden shed and holler for Steve at the top of my lungs. The idea was that if he recognized my voice and was trying to find his way back at least it would give him a sort of navigation beacon. What it did instead was completely unexpected. After two nights of hollering Steve came home at seven in the morning. Not because Steven had heard my voice, but because the neighbours that had stolen him realized that after canvassing their house several times (I had my suspicions for several reasons) and hollering at the top of my lungs every night, I wasn't giving up until I found him and they were obviously starting to panic. Knowing Steve (he's not a quiet cat) he was probably meowing loud enough to be heard outside as well when I was calling him. He came home in such clean condition that it was obvious he had not spent any time outside in the last several days). The point of this story is that it is ok to holler for your family member in the middle of the night. Just do it for short enough periods of time that you're not still at it when the police arrive.

Hiways - If you suspect that you have neighbours that are fed up with what the neighbourhood cats are doing in their garden, there is a strong possibility that your cat has been trapped. Many communities rent out live traps and there are endless examples of people trapping cats and dumping them in the country. Most often in an attempt at empathy they will get dumped at a farm or nearby campground. If you have not found your cat for some time after a thorough search, it may be an idea to canvass the farms along major highways on the way out of town. Whenever I get the chance to I ask rural property owners if cats get dumped on their land and they always complain about how regularly it happens. It also doesn't hurt to ask your neighbours if they know anybody who has been trapping nearby.

If you have some extra help - and have completed some exhaustive searches now is the time to post flyers at public venues. Besides communal mailboxes and power poles are the bulletin boards at grocery stores, community centres, and bingo halls. Online is the free petlynx.net (not to be confused with the company Petlink), Kijiji, craigslist and community websites. Occasionally cats will get dumped in other parts of town. It is good to get the word out there.


That's all I have for you right now. Its 1am so I apologize for how rushed and crudely put together this is.
Most of all, good luck!!

Or you could rent a PA system and drive around the neighborhoods playing the sound of a can opener alternating with the sound of his favorite bag of treats being opened and you calling his name.

If he's like any cat I've ever had, he will be able to psychically detect either food sound from an uncanny distance. In fact, you might have more cats attack you than you can deal with.

Is there a wood sided home near you that is painted red?

I got this image as soon as I read the thread title...like a hole in the side of a garage or storage shed that belongs to the house.

But a dark red colored structure. Look there.

I hope you find the Poor little guy.

I will keep this in mind as I drive around today. I live in an apartment complex where most of the buildings look the same, but I will look in the surrounding neighborhoods for a dark red wooded home or garage.

Thanks!

Since somebody suggested to post a picture here they are:

a reply to: Barcs

Tiverton?

eta; Riverton? Riverton Park?

originally posted by: Bedlam
Or you could rent a PA system and drive around the neighborhoods playing the sound of a can opener alternating with the sound of his favorite bag of treats being opened and you calling his name.

If he's like any cat I've ever had, he will be able to psychically detect either food sound from an uncanny distance. In fact, you might have more cats attack you than you can deal with.

And remember, drive around naked except for your underpants which should be stuffed with rotten fish, wearing a crown of catnip.

originally posted by: Bedlam
Or you could rent a PA system and drive around the neighborhoods playing the sound of a can opener alternating with the sound of his favorite bag of treats being opened and you calling his name.

If he's like any cat I've ever had, he will be able to psychically detect either food sound from an uncanny distance. In fact, you might have more cats attack you than you can deal with.

That is funny!!! And pretty much true!!

originally posted by: FunkyContents
And remember, drive around naked except for your underpants which should be stuffed with rotten fish, wearing a crown of catnip.

I used to use the can opener to summon the Cat of Darkness when he was hiding from me.