The kittens came within a hair's breath of sending me into a MAJOR anxiety attack

[Siwsan]

I suddenly realized I hadn't seen them in a while. I checked all of the usual hiding spots. No kittens. I looked under and behind all of the furniture. No kittens. Behind doors. No kittens. Every litter box location. No kittens. I even checked kitchen cabinets in case one had climbed in when I wasn't looking. No kittens. Laundry room, utility closet and pantry. No kittens.

I'm always careful when I go outside, and most are 'double door' exits but this morning I have the den door open (screen door closed) and the garage door open to get some air circulation. I've been in and out, via that doorway, several times. I started to worry they had slipped out the door!!! So, there I was, in the rain, making numerous walks around the property. No kittens.

By this time my anxiety level was approaching 10.

Then, all of a sudden, as I came back in from ANOTHER walk around the house, there they were in the laundry room!! I almost burst into tears!!! They got major kisses and snuggles.

I still have NO idea where they had been hiding but I'm going to do some major investigating.

If I'm this way with kittens, I can't imagine how I would have been, had I ever had children.

[Walleye]

1. Wow, I can relate to that. Also makes me realize I was wise not to have children

[gab13by13]

2. When my mother passed away,

my daughter and I got my dad a kitten for company. The second day he calls and can't find Bootsie. 3 of us scoured the house for an hour. In one bedroom there was a heavy duty, wooden sliding door for the closet, it was closed. It was attached at the top on a rail, loose at the bottom. We never thought the little bugger would swing the bottom of the door wide enough for him to slip in the closet.

Best move we made getting dad a cat. The cat would bite his toes in the morning to wake him up, my dad says so he would take his pills, but pretty sure he also fed the cat then too.

Another time dad fell asleep with the tea kettle on the stove, it actually smoldered up the wall before Bootsie woke up my dad. No more tea kettles after that, strictly microwave coffee.

[Siwsan]

3. They are the masters at finding places to hide, that's for sure

I need to buy them collars with little tracking devices. Then I can find them with my phone.

[gab13by13]

4. Another hiding place that took a while to find our cat,

under the comforter on the bed. It took a while to notice the lump.

[jpak]

7. I had kitty that disappeared in motel room

I looked everywhere - I was devastated.

Until I saw the lump in bed

There she was - whew!

[CaptainTruth]

27. I had that exact thing happen to me!

[SheltieLover]

8. Great idea!

And maybe have vet chip them.

So glad you are all ok!

[Butterflylady]

11. I have a Bootsie too!

Well that's what we called her when we found out she was a he. Now we just call him Boots.

[bamagal62]

5. We had a pet sitter one time that

panicked because she could not find our cat. The cat was behind all the pillows on our bed curled up asleep. I knew that occasionally she went there. Otherwise, she would have never found her.

[piddyprints]

6. Kitties appear where they were not just a second ago.

We are fortunate that ours come quickly when we call them. Simon is the worst one, though (or should I say the most talented?). He is literally nowhere and then suddenly at our feet! Luna is learning to do that as well. Can't find her anywhere, but she magically appears when we call and we don't have a clue where she came from. So we've learned to just call instead of panic.

So glad you found them. Gotta love 'em, eh?

[Pugee]

10. We have 5 lady kitties.

The youngest used to "flit" from place to place in seconds all the time. Extremely active and never in the same spot long. We named her Pixie as she couldnt sit still and would move so fast

[piddyprints]

16. Great name!

Our youngest does that while letting out little growls. It's the cutest thing.

[niyad]

9. I see that they discovered the kitty portal. They do not yet understand that

going into other dimensions tends to freak out their human parents.

[Siwsan]

15. No doubt that's it!

The relief I felt was nearly overwhelming.

[Rebl2]

17. So true

Last edited Mon Jun 20, 2022, 11:23 AM - Edit history (1)

I, like others on this thread, would not have been good parent. We have one cat and when she was a kitten until about four years old, she would disappear at times in the house-she’s an indoor cat only. I eventually found many of her hiding places. One of the strangest places was a couch upstairs under cushions when she was a tiny kitten. She was small enough she could wiggle back behind them somehow. Also that same couch sits very low to the floor and when she was tiny she could get under it. It freaked me out she could do that. I never had any other kitten that ever did that.

[2naSalit]

25. They will be...

Supreme trickster kitties!

[yellowdogintexas]

29. we fostered a litter of 3 very tiny kittens.

They figured out how to get into my chest of drawers by coming up through the back and crawling over the back of the drawers. I would open a drawer and there they were, napping with my socks. Eventually they grew enough that they could not get behind the chest.

They also figured out how to hide behind the drawers in my waterbed platform. I had adult cats who also did this so I think they just watched and learned.

[Ocelot II]

12. I have freaked out many times over missing cats who were not missing

but had merely decided to sleep in some obscure place where I couldn't find them. I believe they have the ability to find portals into alternate universes, and can slip back into this one when they feel like it - and maybe when you rattle a packet of cat treats - and then then they suddenly materialize at your feet, with a look like, "What??"

[yellowdogintexas]

30. they definitely know where the portals are.

I like to think they travel over to an alternate timeline where Hillary is President.

Once I tried to explain this to a friend who has never had a cat.
It took a while to explain.

I finally described it as Cat Urban Legend

[IrishEyes]

13. My cat hid in the fold out sofa once.

I had put it back to being a sofa and didn't see my cat jump in. I checked all over my apartment for him. I didn't think he could have been in the sofa since he hadn't made a sound. I opened it up a few hours later and he jumped out. He ate some food, used the litter box and then meowed that he wanted to go back. He really liked it in there. I never ended up using the foldout sofa as a bed again and my next sofa was not a fold out.

[mockmonkey]

14. Behind the washer or dryer?

Is there enough space if one kitten sees a bug going behind the washer or dryer for the kitten to get back there. If one goes the other will follow.

I think most of us cat owners have had a cat disappear and the amount of worry you go through trying to find them is exhausting.

[3catwoman3]

18. How well I understand this. Over 30 years ago, one of our indoor cats got out...

...of the house somehow, and was hit by a car. We didn't even know she had gotten out. A neighbor came to the door to tell us. I was devastated. We never did figure out how she escaped. She was only 3.

Ever since then, if I can't locate one of our cats for more than about 30 seconds, I go into panic mode and feel like I'm going to puke.

In 2001, we got a pair of kittens as successors to a much beloved cat who, unbeknownst to us, had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and threw a blood clot which paralyzed his back legs - euthanasia was the only option. One of the 2 successors was a very tiny female. One day, I saw her brother, who was bigger, on the seat of one of the dining room chairs, staring intently at the underside of the table top. When I investigated, I was shocked to find his little bitty sister INSIDE the storage area of the table where the top could be pulled apart to access the table leaves. How she got herself in there remains a mystery, as the top was not open. I NEVER would have thought to look for her there.

Our 2 current cats are good at hiding. Our tuxie female, shortly after we first brought her home, had a strong reaction to her "baby shots, and developed a limp and a temp of 104. I couldn't find her later that day, and was instantly sure she had crawled off somewhere to die, as cats are known to do. I found her UNDER the bottom drawer of my desk, after some panicky searching. She had to go behind the desk to get under the drawer, as the desk bottom sits flat on the floor on all the other sides. How she even found that space, who knows.

Our big tabby male hid for over 8 hours a few Thanksgivings ago. Did the usual "looked everywhere," and nothing. I was so distraught I couldn't even eat dinner. I was on my second walk around outside, looking for a black and brown tabby cat in the dark - good luck with that, right? As I came back in the house, our younger son was coming down the stairs with the big dude in his arms. He had been sound asleep under our son's bed, where, of course, I had looked - several times. It's a platform bed, with under-the-bed drawers. He had crawled behind the drawer closest to the headboard, into a space that cannot be seen unless you take off the mattress, which I had not done. AAUUUGGGGHHHHH! I was so relieved I cried.

Both of our current cats wear TILE devices on their collars so I can "beep" them. Great peace of mind, and I do it often.

[TygrBright]

19. Nothing kittehs enjoy so much as sitting quietly watching hoomins freak out...

...because the hoomins are looking in all the wrong places.

A few days after we moved into the current house back in 2005, Himself got a frantic phone call at work from me, telling him Fisbin (the previous Feline Overlord) was LOST!! He MUST have gotten out somehow because I had looked EVERYWHERE! And I didn't know the house well yet and it was possible he'd found SOME tiny hole or path to make his way out from and I needed help to locate him, STAT!

So Himself traipses home and I race into his arms having my Total Panic Attack while he pats my back and murmurs soothing things and then....

...suddenly...

...he goes silent. And stiffens.

I look up at him. "What?"

He looks at me. And then points.

Atop the soffit in the kitchen, that runs from above the refrigerator all the way to the kitchen window on the right-angle wall, there is Fisbin, in meatloaf position, watching us interestedly, tucked in the 10-inch gap between the soffit top and the ceiling.

I had never thought of looking that far up.

We had a good laugh.

But Fisbin had a better one.

reminiscently,
Bright

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

20. One time, when my son was about two,

I went to check in on him before I went to bed. He wasn't there. I searched the entire house. No son. I was beginning to get frantic, and then looked in the laundry. Guess who was sound asleep on the floor ?

[wendyb-NC]

21. My grown cats do that, disappear

That, gets me into a tizzy. I felt anxious reading your post. I can only imagine how you felt. Glad they turned up. I hope you find their secret hideout.

[Tetrachloride]

22. Open the refrigerator. If no answer, open a can of tuna.

[3catwoman3]

23. Another unexpected hiding place - INSIDE the couch.

My same above-mentioned female tuxie found what she must have thought was a perfect spot. The batting on the underside of an older couch had come loose, and she would crawl up inside there and take a nap. Rather like a hammock. Found her with the TILE beeper device.

Another place I would not have thought to look.

[ChazInAz]

24. I have a horde of theater cats.

My home is an old church that I've converted into a theater. When my senior theater cat rejoined Bastet in November, I adopted three littermate kittens from a neighbor: two black and one grey striped. Didn't get the male black cat neutered quickly enough, resulting in two knocked-up female cats.(They were really not much more than kittens, themselves!) Six more theater cats were thus added to my menagerie: two grey stripers and four black ones.
In a large building like this, especially a theater, there are innumerable places for felines to hide. Black cats, being part of the stage crew, can vanish into any handy shadow. When only the Ghost Light is on, these places teem with shadows.
I spend a lot of time looking for black cats.

[catrose]

26. I'm sorry you were so worried!

I've canceled vet appointments, posted LOST CAT flyers, registered with Lost Cat sites, and then had the little monster stroll out into plain sight. I think they go into other dimensions.

[yellowdogintexas]

28. I had one who often hid behind the floor length drapes in my bedroom

he also had a few other spots I never actually found, but all I had to do was flush the toilet and he would materialize out of nowhere, jump up on the seat and watch the water swirl until it settled. He would rotate his head to follow the current.

I was in a new apartment with this guy, and he of course spent days checking for The Other Cat that he knew had to be there somewhere. I came home one day and could not find him. Even the toilet flush would not work. I finally heard this faint "mew" and found him between the dryer and the wall. There was a distinct scent of white wine, and a broken wine bottle on the floor next to him. It took a bit of acrobatics to get him out of there.

He had jumped up on the shelf above the dryer, knocked off a bottle of SchwarzKatz, which broke. He jumped down to investigate, got wet, licked up wine and bathed himself. He was stone cold drunk!

So I called the vet and rushed him in for a bath just in case there was glass in his fur. My vet and the whole staff nicknamed him the alcoholic cat and he became legendary.

Since he found the bottle of Black Cat wine, I suppose he decided he had found the other cat because he stopped hunting for it.

I had many adventures with him; he is still my favorite cat of all time, even though he has been gone for over 30 years.

[2naSalit]

31. I think this is where the idea...

Of them having nine lives came from!

And association with otherworldly things like magic.