The end of summer heading into autumn was a relatively quiet time.
Hazel seemed to her enjoy her newfound, albeit limited, freedom and her urine issues ‘dried up.’
But in late October, she went missing.
Not Returning
Hazel had taken a shine to the outside world.
This can be problematic if you intend for your Bengal to primarily be a house cat. Dr Yuki Hattori mentions in his book ‘What Cats Want’, that many cats who experience the outside world will then relentlessly demand to be let out.
In Hazel’s case, this took the form of miaowing and pawing at the relevant exits.
This particular day started with her ‘request’ which we duly complied with. As was normal, we saw her at various points throughout the day both inside and out.
In the evening, we called for her to return, banging a spoon against her feeding bowl to let her know it was feeding time. More often than not, the combination of name calling and bowl banging would have the desired effect. If not straight away, usually within a few attempts.
However, on this occasion both failed.
She had stayed out all night on a few occasions, although that was during warmer, summer nights and this was a much colder October.
So although there was some concern she hadn’t come back, we were fairly confident we’d see her waiting for us to open up in the morning.
The Following Morning
Nothing.
She was nowhere to be seen.
Levels to concern started to rise, so we employed the name calling, dinner plate/spoon banging tactics mentioned above along with something else that had worked previously which was to shake a packet of treats.
Yet again, none of these worked.
So we took to briefly searching the local streets and alleyways, but that too yielded nothing.
There wasn’t anything else that could be done at this stage- so we hoped she’d return on her on accord.
I did speak to a neighbour who used to keep cats and he mentioned his came back after a week, albeit with string attached to it. String it had managed to chew threw.
Hearing stories like this were somewhat worrying that fuelled any thoughts we had that maybe she’d been stolen or trapped somwhere.
At this stage, we’d only had her 10 months.
Was she already gone?
Further Reading:
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