My Indoor Cat Has Escaped, What Should I Do?

Close to home search checklist

• Check inside your home first: cupboards, behind appliances, under beds and inside furniture.
• Search your garden and the gardens either side, then the gardens behind.
• Take a torch, even in daylight, and look under and behind things at ground level.
• Leave a door or window you can watch slightly open, with familiar bedding and litter nearby.
• Report your cat to your microchip database, local vets and rescues, and make a missing cat poster.

Quiet hiding places to check

• Under decking, sheds, summer houses and garden furniture.
• Behind bins, planters, log piles and stacked materials.
• Inside open garages, porches, greenhouses, bin stores and car engine bays.
• Dense hedges, borders, undergrowth and the space under parked cars.
• Roofs, gutters and ledges if your cat climbs.

A frightened cat often stays silent and still, even when it hears its owner. Look properly rather than only calling.

Checks with neighbours

Ask neighbours to open and check garages, sheds, outbuildings and anywhere a cat could be shut in, and to look at doorbell or garden camera footage from the time your cat got out. Give them a photograph and your number, and ask them to check again the next day rather than only once.

Repeat searches

Search the same close in places again at dawn and late in the evening, when it is quiet and a hiding cat is more likely to move. Keep the group small and calm, stand still and listen. Rechecking beats widening early: a cat not seen at all may still be very near.

Still missing after 24 hours?

Keep searching close to home, and step up the reporting: ring vets and rescues again, check local lost and found posts, and put posters on nearby routes. Widen the area gradually once nearby spaces have been checked several times, or when a credible sighting points elsewhere. See how long cats go missing for and how far a missing cat can travel.

Would a drone help?

Usually not in the early stages. A drone cannot see under decking, inside sheds or beneath cars, which is where escaped indoor cats most often hide. Aerial searching becomes more relevant when a sighting or other evidence points to a suitable outdoor area, such as fields or rough ground nearby. Read can a drone find a missing cat, drone search for missing cats, or try the drone search checker.

Thermal cameras cannot see through roofs, walls, sheds, vehicles or dense vegetation.