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Cat lost in N Dordogne


Graye
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We have recently been in the UK and left our cats in kennels for two weeks.  I returned on Wednesday and picked them up and on Friday one of them went missing.  We are located in a village called Rudeau, between Nontron and Mareuil.  I believe the older one (white) became disorientated on one of his first trips out and has become lost.

[IMG]http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l360/janlawther/cats-1.jpg[/IMG]

He is very much a survivor, not people-friendly and an excellent hunter.  Unfortunately he is also a very snowy white and not the best colour to be if he is living wild.  He is also part Siamese and has a very distinctive pointed face and the typical Siamese "voice". He is microchipped.   He is wearing a collar with tracker and we are systematically searching the local woods as I believe that is where he will be.  We have checked the village, outhouses etc and we are not receiving a signal but his tracker has batteries which should be functional for up to a year.

We are offering a reward for information which will lead to us finding out where he is.  Putting this request on here is obviously pretty unlikely to turn up any information but I'm trying all ideas I can think of.  I will be putting posters up in the local vets, post office and supermarkets, etc.  Please pm me if you have any other suggestions!  Thanks

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hi ok

All I can offer you is a bit of support really . Being a cat lover we bought our house in France as " fur friendly "  we brought over our 3 girls ...... 3 weeks later we lost one killed we think by a passing car . this is over 3.5 years ago .. anyway you bounce back so one of our friends had some kittens to give away .... never had a tom cat .. so had a tom kitten called .... small minded or what Tommy ,he was the dogs ..... whatsits ..where ever i went he followed me  up the ladder on the roof  ,he used to sleep flat out on my legs " Olive take this cat legs have gone to sleep " every morning at 8 am he used to jump into the sink while i had a shower for water from the tap . funny Tommy not her ...we found him 2 days later  same as Holly dead side of road .

  So we got Sammy  he is 7 months old at the mo   he went missing Thursday last seen at 5 pm ish  we  looked for him all day Friday ..sat ..Sunday  gave up ... 7 30 pm ish  the black and white one Daisy is not in ,Olive is now frantic she starts shouting daisy  ! " paranoid about Sammy "   olive reckons she can here a cat crying  so I goes out in the dark  ...... with just a torch   found him trapped in a ragondan trap by the river ...... hunters normally check the traps every 3 days max just hope he is in one

oooooh best I can do ..youknow what I mean

    Dave and Olive

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I am not in your region and all I can say is that I really reeally sympathize, and I'm sure you will post good news soon, since your cat got this collar with a tracking, I didn't know it existed, sounds great to me.

Not convenient for my old cat (12 ) though, he hardly goes any further than the patio......

Best of luck to you, and please, keep us all cat lovers, informed...

Régine.

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Have you re-registered him with the French authorities for his carte d'identification? If he is picked up & taken to a vet or animal shelter they will automatically scan him for a chip. Your local vet can organise the change of details if you haven't already done this.  If there is any other information on this you want to know about, please let me know & I will do all I can to help.

I really hope you find him soon.

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Thanks for your support on this.  I think just writing it down helps when you are trying to think of every option to get him noticed or track him down.

We lost his brother to a car accident about 18 months ago so have been really careful with him, hence the tracker etc.  Usually we go out and find him before dusk and bring him in for the night, he is rarely all that far from home.  On Friday I started looking at 4pm but with no results, although he had only been out for a couple of hours.  The trackers are really useful and we have already rescued him from being locked in a barn for a week, etc.  The range is 400 feet and they come with two tags and a handheld unit which beeps and gives the direction and range.  Apparently great for things like keys and kids too!  I'll pass on info about them if anyone is interested.

Yes, his chip (originally inserted in Spain) is registered with the Spanish, UK and French authorities as he is very much a travelling cat.  The only reason he didn't come with us this time is that the little black one is still waiting for her passport and we thought they would be happier together.  However I would be very surprised if he were to be picked up, he is definitely not a friendly soul with strangers and is quite reserved with people he knows well.  He would have to be injured to let anyone pick him up and even then he wouldn't be very appreciative!

There is an area where an old chap used to snare rabbits but I've been over it with a fine tooth comb and as he has been warned off very recently by the local warden I would be surprised if that was his fate.

I have enlarged and gridded a local OS map and am now going through it square by square.  It's mainly deciduous woodland interspersed by meadows.  Lots of footpaths but very little used.  I will be sure to report back if I come up with any news!

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I sympathise greatly for you both that have lost your cats, its rotten I know. Last year my tom cat went missing, he never strayed much from the garden and we were convinced he wasn't that interested in Girly cats, but there we were calling him and searching the river banks all to no avail.

We we at our french class some 8 days later when some one mentioned a friend of theirs had had the pompier round to try to get a cat out of thier chimney which they could'nt do as the cat had stopped crying and there was no assurity that it was still there.When I asked where this house was, it was about 500m as the crow flys through the woods from my house. My feet did'nt touch the ground, when we got there the couple let us in and I called up the chimney " Forest!" ( as in Forest Gump!) I got a weak little unmistable cry back and that was it. 36 hours later 3 holes in the wall on different levels through the stone to the chimney void anouther visit from the pompier who hadn't got a long enough ladder went away to get another managed to removed the capping from the chimney but still no sign of Forest. I came back from our house after feeding kids etc to see a black shadow outline of a cat sitting on the chimney top, the house was three storeys high! Our wonderful knows everyone neighbour was called and he managed to "borrow" a cherry picker lorry from the EDF and Forest was rescued and rushed to the vets, he was dehydrated etc but otherwise ok, he had been up the chimney for 9 days in total. We then had about a weeks work retifying the holes and decoration inside the house we were vey lucky that the couple in the house were cat lovers also and it was because of their pretty little cat that Forest had been visiting frequently and generally making a nuisance of himself, but he's been done now and hates the smell of the wood burner!

I hope you both have a happy ending like ours and wish you all the best of luck.

 

Lilly

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Not yet but they are in production (in French and English) as we speak.  Just waiting for my OH to arrive from the UK with the laminator.  I've offered a reward for information leading to his recovery (I suppose that means dead as well as alive but I'm not dwelling on that possibility at the moment):  I'm also producing some flyers to pop through all the local letterboxes but it's such a rural community that I'm not sure how useful that will be.  I'm still hopeful as he is so shy and such a good hunter.  Also because the tracker has not picked up any signs so far.  The locals now think there is a demented woman living in our house who wanders the woods whistling and shouting all day!  But I have a plan with a gridded map and am working my way through it square by square.

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[quote user="Graye"]

The locals now think there is a demented woman living in our house who wanders the woods whistling and shouting all day! [/quote]

I thought that was normal behaviour for cat owners ...

[quote user="Graye"]But I have a plan with a gridded map and am working my way through it square by square. [/quote]

Well done. When our all white cat Cleo went missing in our small (300 people) village in the UK I did all the right things - spoke to everyone, put up posters, walked about all over whistling and calling her name - but no response at all. Eventually - 6 days later - she, quite literally, flew in the cat-flap, fur bristling, in a very agitated state and starving hungry. Apparently she had nosily 'investigated' someone's garden shed about 1/4 mile away and they had, quite innocently, shut her in as they did not know she was there. Then, when they opened the door some 6 days later, this while ball had exploded out of the shed door and disappeared across the fields. They had not known it was our Cleo until they mentioned the incident in the pub a couple of days later...

Sue

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