Avoid This Big Mistake When Searching For a Missing Cat

Making Changes to Your Cat’s home Environment will Discourage it From Returning Home

My personal experience in recovering missing cats has revealed that the biggest mistake you can make when a cat first goes missing is to start making changes to your cat’s home environment and territory. Especially if you do not even know for sure why your cat has gone missing in the first place and more so if your cat is of a slightly nervous temperament.

Most cat experts agree that cats form incredibly strong bonds to their human families, home environments and territories and as such are extremely sensitive to any changes that take place within these areas.

Despite this well documented understanding of cat behaviour unbelievably most cat charities and cat rescue centres will advise you that if your cat is missing you should immediately start to make changes to your cat’s home environment and territory recommending that you should:

·       Put cat food outside.

·       Hang your clothing on fences.

·       Put the Cat Litter Outside

·       Scatter your hoover contents all over your garden.

All these recommendations are a mistake because cats hate change to their homes and territories and its all down to how they have evolved.

A Common Ancestor

All domestic cats have a common ancestor a species of cat known as the Africa-Asian Wildcat. These cats are roughly the same size as domestic cats, are nocturnal creatures living solitary lifestyles and occupying vast territories of scrub land.

Consequently, encounters between wild cats are very uncommon so they had to evolve a means of communicating that went way beyond face-to-face contact and they achieved this through scent. And over the thousands of years that wildcats have existed they have developed an impressive repertoire of scent messages, and every scent message is used to illicit a specific behaviour in other cats.

This means that scent is the most important aspect of all cat communication playing a crucial role in marking territorial boundaries, warning off trespassers and guarding resources which in turn significantly reduces incidents of conflict and injury between neighbouring cats.

So, the last thing you want to be doing if your cat is missing is to start sending challenging or misleading scent messages across your cat’s territory. Not only will this encourage the neighbouring cats to come into your cat’s territory, but you will also discourage your cat from returning home because its territory will quickly develop a hostile and intimidating aroma.

My strongest advice to all cat owners is to leave your cat’s territory exactly as it was when you cat first went missing. Your cats knows exactly where their homes are and if they can or indeed inclined to then they will return home when they are good and ready.

If you want to see exactly what happens when changes are made to a cat’s home environment or territory, then watch out short video on our YouTube channel Pet Detective TV which reveals just how quickly your cat’s environment can become hostile.

Colin Butcher

Senior Investigating Officer UKPD