This Elsa. She is 6 years old, a bit shy around people, but very cuddly when she warms up. Three weeks ago, we moved to a new apartment. The plan was to take her to the new apartment before the movers came, but came the morning of, and she was nowhere to be found. I tried looking for her, but then the movers were there, and we just had to get going. I continued looking for through the day, but nothing. I was at the old apartment two days in a row afterwards to clean out, with no signs of her anywhere. Eventually, I just came to the conclusion she must have gotten out while the movers were coming in and out. I went looking for her in the woods by the old apartment, sent pictures of her to all my friends, made Facebook posts, and whatnot.
She had not. Three days ago, I got a message from my old renter asking if I was missing a cat. Apparently, the new owners had found her while doing renovations. She was hiding under the kitchen bench. I'm still not sure how she got there. Guys, I was there all alone for two days in a row, and she never made a sound.
Anyways, she was still alive. Luckily, she had access to water in the toilet and was a bit overweight, so she had a bit to get on. But 3 freaking weeks. Without food. I took her to the vet, she spent one night there for observations. They did bloodtests, and yes, she was dehydrated and some other stuff, but overall, she was still in pretty good shape. The vet told me she was expecting a half dead cat when I called to make the appointment. I told her that she was a bit fat before all this, and you know what the vet said? She still is. She is still overweight after 3 weeks without eating.
She is home now, it's a new place and she had been through a horrendous ordeal so I was expecting her to hide for a while before feeling at home at the new place. And hid she did, she found a small opening by the kitchen kabinets and hid, and I swear to god I almost started crying. But she did not stay hidden when I woke up this morning, she was sleeping by my feet as she usually does. She is laying by my side right now and getting all the cuddles I I got a huge vet bill from the whole ordeal, but it doesn't matter because I'm so happy to have my girl back again, safe and sound. So next time somebody calls her fat, I'll just tell them that that saved her life, so let her be her cute chunky self.
Edit: this post exploded so I feel obligated to clarify some points of my post:
• she was hiding under a cupboard, not visible without removing a piece of wood, which is how she was found when the new owners removed it when renovating. English is not my first or even second language so I did not know the right word to describe it.
• the new owners did not move in as they are renovating the apartment first, so there was no food or anyone there, except for a few hours a day when renovating.
• she is going on a diet plan made by the vet after she has fully recovered. I'm also going to have her checked for thyroid as some have mentioned in the comments. She has always been big, almost twice the size of her siblings since a kitten. I do not overfeed her, she usually gets one small portions of food a day. She is not fond of exercise though. I do not think an obese cat is wither cute or healthy, I want her to live a long and happy life. I was obviously not succeeding in getting her weight down, but i promise I'll be more diligent this time and follow the vets advice.
• I did have a plan of taking her to the new apartment before the movers came, got up two hours before they got there and had everything ready to go but she had already gone in to hiding by then. I know better now, thanks to a lot of helpful advice from a lot of you guys, and I will plan and execute it much better next time if I ever move again. I did not abandon her, I genuinely thought she had gotten out and was desperately looking for her in the weeks she was missing. If I had even an inkling of suspicion she was still there, I would have looked harder and informed the new owners. There are a lot of things I could have done better in this situation, and trust me, I'm beating myself every day about. I feel horrible that she had to go through that.
• and last but not least, I do think she found at least some insects and/or rodents to feed on. I understand now that my title is misleading, but I can't do anything about it now. I do not think this was a good way for her to lose weight and I wish none of this had never happened.
She is doing good now. She is in the new apartment and has been exploring the new place. She is getting a lot of cuddles but no treats, at least not yet. I appreciate all the good wishes and have been laughing and crying reading your comments. There are lots of similar stories, so I hope this post at least helps in some way from keeping this from happening to someone else.
I know I'm not perfect and that I did not do everything right, but i do love her very much, and these three weeks have been hell, not knowing where she was or how she was doing. We are very happy to have her home and hope to cherish many years with her still. I'm probably forgetting something but I'm tired now so this will have to do. Thank you so much for all your well wishes.
Is it possible that some hunting has been going on while she was on her own? She was under the bench when you found her, but she was not stuck there, right?
Either way, happy that your baby girl can sleep at her favorite place again!!
My garden is overpopulated with rabbits and it's becoming an issue because the cat is determined to eat all of them. They a reproducing faster than she can eat them and she is getting very chunky. So the solution should clearly be more cats.
My childhood cat ended up on the bug diet for a couple weeks. She did end up losing half her body weight in her ordeal (we think a coyote chased her down the street then up a large tree and she got stuck there, we had up get an arborist to climb the tree to get her down when we finally found her). Kept her alive, but barely. She wasn't a chunk to start with though.
Did she lose weight? Depending on her size/weight she burns 200-400 ish calories per day, which means she could have lost a pound or two in three weeks with no food, a lot for a cat. Poor little girl!
She did loose weight but I don't know how much since we don't have a weight. Vet said she was still a little bit overweight but that we should just try maintaining her weight for now and go for a more suited diet when she is fully recovered.
Definitely. Cats get most of their water from food and while it is possible she found a good source of water, the chances that she did that and never found food while also not being emaciated are essentially zero.
Thank you! And they are actually GPS trackers! We have a few acres and they like to walk the property with us, but on the off chance they sneak out the door when I don't know etc. I wanna know where they are! Tractive actually just came out with even smaller ones attached to the collar we are planning to upgrade to.
She’s ready for hibernation if need be I’d say. 😆 Glad your baby is okay! I’d be worried sick! My senior kitty Miss Kitty is all of 9 lbs. We think she was the runt of the litter.
"It's not fat, it's emergency rations," is usually what I say (and nicely appropriate to Elsa's situation). To which they do not laugh or even crack a smile, but hey. That's showbiz, baby!
A few years ago a cat started coming around the food dish my wife started leaving on the porch when one of our cats got out. She kept it up after we found our cat because ferals were coming around.
Anyway. This cat wasn’t feral. I eventually caught it and took it to get scanned, as I do with all potential strays we find. Turns out the cat was a patient at our vet and they got me in touch with the owners.
He’d been missing for half a year. They figured he was dead. When I let him out of our carrier he started meowing and going crazy with his owners.
Then the husband looks at the cat and calls up to his wife “Honey. You’re not gonna believe this, but he’s fatter than when he got out!”
One of my dad's cats was hiding in a box spring that was wrapped in plastic and taken to storage. FORTY DAYS later they found him, not dead but very nearly so. The vet said another day or two and he would have been gone, and thinks he survived only because condensation formed in the plastic that he was able to drink.
My dad had passed before this happened, it was my "stepmother" who facilitated the move. Wanna hear the worst part?? She moved, and then moved again to an apartment that would only take two cats, not three, so she had him put down! I'm still so infuriated and this was years ago.
That's wild. If anyone had a pet of mine or my parents put down without reason, they'd be put down. If you can call it that without needles or anesthetic or anything....
I don’t know if I believe in hell, but sometimes I desperately hope there is a hell so people that do foul absolutely useless (like not self defense or anything that can be thought of as “in the moment”, etc) have a place to spend eternity
Agreed. No way she wouldn't have died. Mice, probably. However, the story isn't less remarkable for it. She survived. I am so glad you got her back and also that she doesn't seem traumatized. ❤️
Cats burn 200-250 calories a day just living. One pound of fat is ~3500 calories. That means 200 calories x 21 days = 4200 calories, or a bit over a single pound of fat.
If OP’s cat started out overweight, they definitely have more than a pound of fat on them. A cat at a healthy weight is between 14-25% body fat. So a healthy 10 lb cat has 1.5-2.5 lbs of fat on them.
An obese cat might have 4 or more pounds of fat on them. Most cats that are not underweight could survive 3 weeks without food if they had access to water and absolutely had to.
My cat goes into a full panic when he can see the bottom of his bowl. He has always been very good at self regulating and my vet says he is a healthy weight.
Idk if it was from his time as a stray but he needs the security of knowing there is food whenever he gets hungry
Completely disagree with that take🤣. She looks much chunkier in the first photo and you can see the stress in her coat in all the followup pictures and just how much foopa she lost. Still, a funny happy story that all worked out. Glad you found her!
She is on a strict diet now, weighing small portions every couple of hours. And when she goes back to regular food she will be getting food that's more appropriate for her.. situation.
Low key... her 3 week "starvation diet" is probably making it much easier for her to accept small portions. My late chunky baby had a reign of terror when he was put on a diet.
I did put her on a diet earlier, smaller portions just once a day and she surprisingly did not complain much. She just learned to portion her food throughout the day. She would find a sock or something to cover her food til later. The diet was obviously not working.
I'm sorry, she found a sock to cover her food? As in, she covered it up so as to protect it? Poor kitters, that's hilarious. Also, I love the last photo - she looks like a bunny. ❤️
What do you mean "the diet was not working?" Your cat's weight is calories in calories out. If she was not losing any weight at all, she was either not getting as much exercise or she was finding more food/treats somewhere.
Portioning food throughout the day does not ruin a diet, it's still the same amount of calories no matter when she eats it.
My cat has really struggled with food control ever since she was spayed. I got one of those auto feeders that drops certain portions at certain times of the day and its been a godsend. She didnt LOVE the transition to it but its been a few years now and she's at a healthy weight and happy. Its also just interesting to see how good their internal clock is. She can be dead asleep and about 60 seconds before the food drops she will get up and wait right by the bowl. I do have to put a weight on top of the feeder now because she figured out how to open it, but I've been doing that for a couple years and she cant beat the weight.
That’s good! Slightly overweight, but under control is much better than letting her get too big again. I know their chonk is cute, but it’s detrimental to their longevity and their joints (just like humans when we’re old and overweight). Anyway, I’m happy she’s home! That’s the main thing 🙂
I’m glad you found her and that she’s okay! Something similar happened when my younger sister moved into a new place. Her one cat who’s super scared of people was nowhere to be found after workers came to set up her WiFi, so she assumed that she got out while they were coming in and out. We looked for hours for her, checked everywhere and looked all over outside and there was no sign of her. I had to head home since it was almost 3am, I get a call from my sister saying she had somehow gotten up on top an air duct in the basement and tucked herself into a dark corner. 😭
I lost my cat in my CAR once. I stopped for a car wash, did my thing, cat is GONE. Went looking around calling for him and whatnot for like an hour. Walk back to the car, there he is looking out the window at me. It's amazing what cats can fit into.
Yeah I had a very stressful move once when we lost our cat in the cab of the U-Haul; it took hours to get her out and we ended up paying extra charges for not returning the truck on time 😡
I didn’t really lose my cat because I didn’t realize he’d gone missing, but at my old apartment I heard my cat meowing and could not figure out where he was. I’d call and he’d meow. After some looking I opened the refrigerator and he was on the bottom shelf. He must have sneaked in while I was getting something out.
I lost my dog for hours once. We thought she’d escaped from our garden. She’d managed to slip into our back porch. It was mostly full of junk that was yet to be thrown out, she’d squeezed herself into the very back of the pile of shit and got herself stuck 😭😭
She didn’t even bark, i only found her because i could hear her crying quietly lol.
Cats usually start having liver failure due to the build up of billurin and start becoming yellow after 3-5 days of no food. Cats been eating something
Also I didn’t see any word about where she’d been relieving herself. If that kitchen bench wasn’t full of doodie then that’s another tick in the bucket toward her probably going inside/outside.
It’s fully possible she got out during the move, and then snuck past a foot to get back in a few weeks later only to go “where tf you go??”
The new owners found puddles of pee in the apartment, not under the kitchen benk though. They found one small dehydrated poop. I'm pretty sure she must have found something to eat like bugs or mice, but she had no way of getting out of the apartment.
It really sounds like she got outside during your move then got back in during the new owners Renos. Doors are open a lot during renovations. It would be so easy for a cat to get in and out. And one poop in 3 weeks is impossible. But regardless its amazing you got her back.
My dad “lost” my cat while I was on vacation. It was December. I wailed when he told me he was gone for 3 days. Turns out he was in the garage, we think the majority of the time, if not the whole time. They had started putting food in the garage on the 3rd day with the door open hoping he came back and he basically immediately came
This has to be what happened. It's the simplest theory that explains both her maintained weight and lack of pee/poop in the unit. She probably got out, survived on the street (likely with neighbor help), tried to sneak back into "home" and freaked out when her people and their stuff were all gone.
Air tracker collar has been very helpful for us in this regard. Cat largely spends time in the garage, but stopped coming for food and water for more than a day... Turns out she was stuck up in the rafters by some moving stuff. Never made a noise even after missing a whole day of food and drink, but was very pleased to be brought down with the step stool.
I had a fat cat that got caught by a coyote once. Too hefty to break his neck so the cat survived with a puncture wound on his head and a bit of grass stains. Behold, Blueberry:
Cats are so resilient. My brothers chonky cat got outside during march-april in Michigan. He was also overweight. He was out in the wild for 6 weeks before a golfer reported a scraggly cat that had attacked her lol!! The workers managed to snag the vicious cat and take him to the animal shelter where they read his chip. My brother thought he was a goner. He went and got his vicious boy and took him to the vet. He was perfectly fine minus being malnourished and dehydrated. It was literally a miracle.
Oh and the lady at the golf course tried to sue my brother for his attack cat lol. Nothing came of that.
I'm glad this story has a great ending, Elsa is back with you! She's been thru so much, I'm glad you're understanding. All the best to both of you 💕✨️🐾🐾😸💖
I'm glad she's okay! This story gave me flashbacks. I had a cat pull a similar thing when we moved. But he didn't hide in the house.... He packed himself.
We looked everywhere for him for like 3 days. Then my sister went to our temporary storage unit to pick up a box of clothes. She noticed some poop on the floor and was like "that damn cat" at first, and then it hit her that there shouldn't be cat poop in a storage unit. Lol. She called his name and he jumped out of a box.
When we were putting boxes in the U haul, he hopped inside one and didn't make a sound or leave the box even when we unloaded it into the storage unit.
The vet said that it was really important to not give too much food to not shock her system. That's why I'm weighing her food and feeding small portions through the day.
Yeap, even 24 hours without any food could harm the cat, and after 48h, the cat in serious danger. No matter how chunky his kitty was, it's impossible to survive 3 weeks without any source of calories.
Our cat went missing for at least two weeks, we searched everything,constantly calling him in the garden (he was an indoor-outdoor cat). We were in the kicthen when we started to hear some noise from outside. Apparently it was the cat meowing from the neighbour’s well. He was almost always silent, making very few noises, but this time he was loud. My brother is a firefighter so we called them and he went down to save him. He was very skinny,there must have only been water down there.
Heh, cats. We once moved and traveled a long distance, driving, with two cats. We stayed in hotels along the way, and when checking out of one, we couldn't find one of our cats. We just COULD NOT FIND HER, even though it was guaranteed that she was in the room and had no possible way to have escaped. We actually asked the hotel staff to help us, and they started literally taking the room apart - and sure enough, there she was, under the bed in a funny tiny spot that we never could have seen into and that we couldn't even figure out how she got into.
They slept in their crates for the rest of the trip. lol.
Omfg it’s the worst. I drove from TX to to WA solo with two cats and a dog, the morning after our first hotel stop one of the cats was MIA. Ended up having to flip the mattress and box spring off the bed frame (by myself) and sure enough there he was. Zero idea how he managed to get in there and they slept shut into bathrooms the rest of the trip lol.
My cat did this same thing. The movers came, she was no where to be found to put in her crate. We searched and searched. I thought she had snuck out with the movers there.
I found her that night on top of the fridge, under the cabinet, all the way in the back. Her eyes glinted off of some light and that's how I found her.
It is such a heart breaking experience when your pet is lost. I'm glad your kitty is well after her ordeal.
Couple weeks ago my garage burnt down. 4am. Fire fighters where all in and out of the house. All three cats hid. . but our void esp hid super well. We have no idea how he keeps hiding so well. I went to the animal shelter to make sure he wasn't brought in. The garage is just stuff. But a missing cat is the real emergency.
Eventually he came out a day later.
But when we first got him he hid for days. Weeks. In a not so big house without many places to hide. We installed wifi moton cameras to make sure we still had a cat.
3 days the food didn't get touched. The litter box wasn't used.
...
I have a thermal camera. And during the fire he found out he can jump between the memory foam top and mattress of my bed. And he wasn't in plain sight he was hiding under where the covers where. So I couldn't find him on thermal. Crazy kitty.
Glad she's fine but potentially dangerous misinformation to suggest that her chunkiness saved her life (or is at all a good thing outside of being cute to some). She survived because she successfully found meals at least every other day.
Cats are not humans, a few days without eating is deadly for all cats because of a fatal liver disease.
See this is what I tell people! If I have a medical emergency and end up in the hospital imma be fine because I have plenty of weight to lose! I’ll get better and walk out the hospital looking fine 🤣🤣
I know this story is fake. Because my cat would literally die if she went even 12 hours without food. She tells me this literally every single day, multiple times every single day.
Cats will develop fatty liver and go into liver failure and die with no food. No way this cat has 0 access to calories for 21 days straight. Absolutely crushed that empty apartment of roaches and anything else edible.
This is just a great story. I love that it ends happy. Hits me in the feels because this is one of my favorite books from when I was a kid. It’s from a rescue group or something, but I have a plush that goes with it and now my daughter loves the book and the cat lovie.
i was accidentally feeding my cat half portions for two weeks. i had to switch him to a wet food only diet after he got some teeth pulled and i failed to do math correctly. i brought it up at his recheck and the vet emailed me later saying he was getting a dangerously low amount of calories and needed to double his intake. i felt so fucking horrible and i corrected it as soon as it was brought to my attention. on the (very minor, i still feel so guilty) bright side, he was already chunky and we were struggling to get his weight down. he is now only 1 pound overweight AND being fed the correct amount for his goals
Damn sorry you had to go through that ordeal while moving that must of been so stressful! Glad they are safe, go get a treat for you and your cat you guys deserve it.
I had something similar happen with a kit and I rescued from where I worked. She was a couple of months old and used to hang around my job but one day I noticed her eye was swollen shut and the whole side of her face was also swollen. Turned out she had a really bad eye infection. I thought she was going to go blind. So I captured her took her home took her to the vet. She was pretty much feral. So we were keeping her in the bathroom so she could get used to her new environment and so she was easy to catch and give her medicine. One night my mother went in to get her and she escaped the bathroom and ran off into the house. We couldn't find her. She disappeared for more than a week. We were convinced that she slipped out the door one night when somebody was coming in and out. It was the dead of winter. My mother was heartbroken because we didn't think she could survive outside. I put a pet carrier outside with a heated electric blanket and food. Nothing went in there. And then one day she just appeared out of nowhere. It turned out she crawled under the couch and found a spot up inside the couch and she was just chilling in there the whole time. No food or water. My mother said that she had read online or something that cats when they're in fear or danger and have to hide can enter a hibernation like state where they can survive without food or water for a while. I don't know if that's true but it happened to us.
If she was still fat even during 3 weeks of no food (assuming this was the case and she didn't hunt for mice or other small critters), I wonder if she could possibly have hypothyroidism? Because weight gain and being obese even with normal food intake is the hallmark of it. Not losing weight during 3 weeks of (presumably) starvation is nuts! 😬 I would check again with your vet if I were you.
Overweight cats are at more risk of dying if they go a prolonged period without food. They're more prone than normal-weight cats to a condition called hepatic lipidosis that causes them to go into liver failure if they burn too much fat too fast.
Just an FYI, now that she's out of danger. Believe your vet when they tell you to try to get her to lose weight.
Cats are quite good at surviving without eating but yeah I think I agree with the other commenter that she might have snuck out at night and got some sort of food in the new owners stuff. But I’m glad she’s back with you! That’s why when we move, my cats are always shut in an empty room while the movers are there so they can’t escape 😅 but at our last place my female who is roughly 8-9lbs is very liquid and somehow found immediately when we moved into that apartment that she could wiggle her way in this small hole that led to some empty space in the cabinetry next to the dishwasher 🤣 if I hadn’t seen her sneak in there, I wouldn’t have known where she was hiding
There was a story a few years ago about a cat that was found in a shipping container - it survived a 3 week journey from China to Prince George BC - which isn’t anywhere near the coast
I'm so glad she is OK! One of my furry babies is named Elsa also. I named her after Elsa, the lioness in the book Born Free. There was a Born Free movie also in the 70s. It's about an orphaned lion cub adopted by Joy Adamson. Joy and her husband later had to train Elsa to live in the wild. It's a wonderful story. Here's my Elsa...
I had a calico go missing during a move. Spent two days looking for her. Moved and 13 days later when I was unpacking found her among loosely packed bathmats and towels in one of the first boxes loaded! Skinny as could be, but alive. Went on to live another 10 years. I just couldn't believe she hadn't suffocated.
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