1. Do a letter drop to all your neighbours and do it as soon as your cat is missing – don’t wait a few days and hope your cat will come back by itself. We waited for 6 days and I wish we’d done it a lot sooner. We delivered about a 100 letters to the houses in our block. We got quite a few phone calls reporting sightings of our cat as a result of these letters.

2. Put posters up. Quite a few people saw us putting our posters up and offered to help, e.g. by looking in the gardens, under their houses and asking their friends/neighbours. One person who saw us putting a poster up had seen our cat just days before.

3. Once sightings are reported, knock on people’s doors who live near where your cat was sighted. I was amazed and comforted by how friendly and helpful people were.

4. Walk around your neighbourhood at dawn, just before/as the sun is coming up. Take your cat’s food with you and make whatever sounds you do at the cat’s dinner time. I took our cat’s bag of dry biscuits and shook them. Call your cat’s name softly and don’t forget to stop and listen our for his/her meows. I had read on the internet that a frightened cat will hide, e.g. in a shed, garage or under a house, so you have to treat your search like a game of hide-and-seek. A torch is good to have because your cat’s eyes will reflect the light.

5. Read as many lost-cat-happy-ending stories on the internet as you can. This made me realise how likely it was that we’d find our cat, and made me keep looking for him. I realise now that 8 days was nothing. Some cats are found months later.

I found our cat at dusk in the same place I’d already looked during the day – I reckon he just kept quiet (our of fear) during the day, but at dawn, while it was still dark and quiet, he meowed when he heard my voice. He was 150m away from our house, at the first house that had an overgrown garden, space under the house for him to hide in, and no resident dogs or cats.

Good luck, stay positive!