Patricia Franckhauser's method for finding a lost cat

I have been using this method for more than 20 years of field experience. As I am currently a volunteer animal welfare manager, I decided to share it with you. I hope this explanation will stay online as long as possible, because it will be of great use to people who have lost their cat or kitten.

Whether you lost your cat near home or elsewhere, its reaction will be to hide immediately, especially if it doesn't know the surroundings where it has just strayed. If it does know them, the same can happen after a shock, pain, a bad fright, or the onset of an illness that upsets it, gives it a fever, disturbs its hearing, its sight, and so on.

1. At nightfall, call it in a very loud and clear voice.
2. Call for a good 5 full minutes, every fifteen or twenty minutes (every half hour at the very least).
3. Keep going for at least 3 hours in total, i.e. at least 6 times per evening, more if you like.
4. Start again every evening for about ten days if necessary.

Personally, I call every twenty minutes, for a good 5 minutes. Do it calmly but loudly (never mind the neighbors: until 10 p.m. there is no such thing as a night-time disturbance), from dusk until a few hours later. Call it “tirelessly”.

What will happen

• First night: your cat will hear you, but will not move.
• Second night: it will notice you and work out where your voice is coming from. It will then try to come closer as soon as it understands that it can rely on your voice to get its bearings and find its way back.
• After that: it will begin its longest walk. If it is injured or weakened, that will be hard for it, but it will come back even on 3 legs!

You will need to persist so that it gains confidence. It may have lost several kilos and lost its voice. In general, it is within a radius of 250 to 300 meters around the place where it ran off, and it will hear you even farther away, because at night, voices carry. Don't be afraid to call it loudly by its name.

Simply because a cat lives in a world of familiar smells and sounds. If it gets lost, or if it can no longer see well following a shock or for some other reason, it can no longer find its scents and landmarks, and it gets lost, sometimes even 50 meters from home or closer. It may panic and burrow into a corner: a cellar, a woodpile, a car bumper.

It works after a month's absence, just as after several months or a year, if the cat recognizes your voice. The key is that it be repeated, at fixed times, at night, and last long enough for your cat to hear you and understand that the sounds will be repeated every evening.

A gentleman from my village found his cat after 5 months missing; that is currently our record. It came back very weakened, but it came back.

A cat needs “several months” to find its bearings. You don't “let a cat out” into its new garden as soon as it arrives: wait at least a month and a half to 3 months, longer if you can, before letting it out.

While you're at it, don't forget to have it vaccinated, neutered or spayed and above all identified (tattoo or microchip) before letting it out.