Last night my family realized our sole indoor cat was missing. She usually keeps to herself which is why it took so long for us to notice. Once we realized she was missing, we figured that she'd probably been gone since about that same time the night before so she's been gone for maybe 24 hours...well, right now as I post this probably over 50 hours.
She always liked trying to dart outside if ever there was an open door so we had to keep an eye on that. I think she managed to sneak out because my daughter keeps her bike near our back door and when she was bringing it in I think the cat was in that area at the time and probably ran out at that time. My oldest daughter occasionally has a bad habit of leaving the door open. I've made sure to not make my daughter feel as if she is to blame; it was an accident.
Our cat was about 16-17 years old though, front claws removed. I don't see how she's going to survive out there. She'd been domesticated and an all-around indoor cat for practically her entire life. I'm not really sad or anything, but I do feel as if I failed this cat though for not exercising a little more responsibility in watching over her. I really hate to see any animal suffer outdoors like this especially since she's been indoors for so long. My daughters aren't really upset though. My oldest in fact has been bugging us to get new kittens for a while but we always told her that she needed to wait until our present cat died because she would not adjust at all to having new kittens share the house with her. So, she's handling it well.
I do have a suspicion that the cat may have known her time was getting close though. One day last week we came home to find her laying down on my oldest daughter's bed which she's never done, maybe that was her way of saying goodbye. I know animals do that sometimes.
It's just kind of a shitty way to start the week.
Update: We managed to find her. It was just dumb luck really but the wife was pulling into the driveway and spotted her near our shed. What really sucks was that I checked under that shed twice and never saw her. Anyway, so as not to spook her she immediately turned the car off and approached her slowly. She panicked and hid under the shed. I suspect she's been hiding there this entire time. I managed to get her out and after bringing her she was very thirsty. Despite having one day of heavy rain, I don't think she drank much at all and in fact there was a large pool of water in our back yard she could have easily drank from. She's also very tired thus I don't think she slept much at all. During the days she was missing the weather was fair and warm, to heavy rain, to freezing temperatures at night and everything in between.
So right now my main concern is watching to make sure she urinates properly because I'm hoping her kidneys haven't shut down. Will just observe for the next day or so and take it from there.
Also one lesson learned from all of this was that we should have put out her litter box, bed, some food a lot earlier. We didn't do this until like the 3rd day she was gone and I think either that helped encourage her to get out from her hiding space or possibly thirst/hunger did it.