Leigh’s Lost and Found: How the sounds of cats in heat helped lure a lost cat back home

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - In today’s Leigh’s Lost and Found, the weird solution one family turned to, to lure their lost cat back home.

Curiosity got the best of Terrance the cat, when he snuck out an open door at his Nixa home and disappeared.

His owner Clay Trautman says, “we just moved here back in November, so when he got out, obviously he doesn’t outside very often and wasn’t familiar with his surroundings, so we thought he might have gone back to the previous house, about a half mile away.”

Clay took to social media right away to post about Terrance and then they hit the streets.

“The first thing we did is get out and walk around for hours. We set out his cat litter, we put out our clothes with scents on it, put out food.”

All the usual tricks to attract Terrance didn’t work, so the Trautman family got creative.

“That’s when we found the Youtube video. Someone had told us, as far as cats, it’s basically cat attracting noises.”

The video is eight hours straight of yowling cat sounds. Clay hooked his phone up to a blue tooth speaker and played it.

“We put it out in our garage and let that run for the first night.”

And sure enough, within a day, the loud meowing lured Terrance back.

“We opened the garage door and he was just sitting right there and ran inside.”

Terrance was very hungry and a little dirty, but was just fine otherwise. And the family is thrilled the missing cat saga is over.

Clay says, “our youngest was pretty torn up since he’s kind of her cat, he sleeps with her every night. So it really bothered her, it bothered us a lot. We didn’t want to give up on it.”

The Trautman’s advice to others with lost kitties? Don’t be afraid to get weird.

“We looked like the absolute craziest people around, walking around with these cats meowing on our phones, with flashlights. It was the weirdest thing, but it worked.”

Some other good tips to find a lost cat include putting their dirty litter box outside along with some of your dirty clothes with your scent on them. You can also try putting out really stinky food like tuna or anchovies.

To report a correction or typo, please email digitalnews@ky3.com

Copyright 2022 KY3. All rights reserved.