‘She recognized me and started meowing.’: Lost cat miraculously returns after two weeks of searching the apartment complex her pawrents originally rescued her from, where she was found hiding in a pipe

Author image for Laurent Shinar
Laurent Shinar • Writer and Editor
Dec 22, 2025 3:00 PM EST

Cats are annoyingly independent sometimes. Kind of like a toddler who feels that they are more than ready for us to step aside and let them handle the electric repairs in the household. Except that cats can move at twenty times the speed of a toddler and are more interested in escaping than DIY home repair. Making their independent strike missions much more maddening for their pawrents than what a toddler might manage to do. Which is unfortunately what happened to this story's couple, who recently moved to a new apartment and had their cat decide it was time to head out for a multi-week-long adventure in the big wide world.

But it seemed that nothing could stop this couple from being discouraged from finding their cat, as they followed every protocol and trick in the book until they were finally reunited with their independent runaway, who turned out to rather regret running away from home and will hopefully think more than twice about doing something like that again in the future.

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  • 01
    "Our indoor cat went missing for 13 days and we finally found her late last night."
    via minimal-minimalist
  • 02
    Hi fiends. My indoor-only cat got outside roughly 30 hours ago and there's been no sign of her. We just moved into a new apartment a week ago today and I stupidly didn't close our front door behind me all the
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  • 03
    way when I took our dogs out and she must've slipped out. We've got fresh water, a bed, articles of clothing and two mouse toys outside. We didn't put the litter box outside based on the research I did and we didn't leave food
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  • 04
    overnight as to not attract strays. I've read the MARS lost cat behavior multiple times and based on my cat's cautious temperament we've been doing physical searches around our
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  • 05
    apartment building and the ones next to us. We've looked at dawn and dusk, used a mag light to see the reflection of eyes and talked to almost all our ground floor neighbors. We've quietly sat outside
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  • 06
    rough looking orange and white cat sitting outside
    via Alexander via Adobe Stock

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 07
    to see if we see or hear anything and called for her periodically. I saw a stray cat walk right in front of me when I was sitting on our patio, not sure what that might indicate. I've TNR several cats in the past so I'm
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  • Wow, as if moving house is not stressful enough on its own, to then lose your cat pretty much as soon as you have a moment to settle into your new environment must be heartbreaking. But at least these pawrents are not giving up hope on their cat child coming back and are taking every measure to make sure that it happens.

  • 08
    going to try a humane trap with tuna later today. I'm going to make flyers as well. There's a lot of landscaping in this complex so we've been incredibly diligent at looking under and around bushes and
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  • 09
    plants. I've (quietly) looked on people's patios to see if she's hiding there. We've looked in the nearby sewer drains, under cars, in trees, really any conceivable hiding spot we can think of. We've also tried shaking a bag of treats and softly
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  • 10
    black and white kitten holding onto bars of a cage
    via Lightspruch via Adobe Stock

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 11
    calling her name. There's a lot of dogs in this complex along with squirrels, ducks, geese and birds. Is it possible that the wildlife has deterred her at all? I've gone as far as to listen to the squirrels to see if they chatter
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  • 12
    as it can be a sign of a cat nearby. I'm just tied up in knots over this. Karmically, we found her in this same apartment complex 3 years ago. We moved into a different apartment shortly after we
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  • 13
    found her and we moved back for a short term lease as we're closing on a house at the end of summer. I've thought about looking around our old apartment, but it's well across the other side of the
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  • Well, sometimes it is exactly those gut feelings that we have to follow. Because whether your choose to believe it or not, cats do indeed have some sort of spiritual connection in this world, and so have these subtle ways of communicating with us through the universe. Much like this woman thinking about the apartment complex from which they rescued their cat initially.

  • 14
    complex. Maybe? Any more ideas on where to look would be super appreciated. I'm convinced she's close. Thanks in advance!
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  • 15
    Wanted to give an update as I received so much support on my last post. Our indoor cat went missing for 13 days and we finally found her late last night. She was at the front of our apartment complex and we were lucky enough
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  • 16
    to see her run behind some bushes in front of the leasing office. We're almost positive she was hiding in a small pipe in a storm drain as she lost a good amount of weight. A woman in our complex saw our
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  • 17
    flyers and was out walking her dog when she saw our cat. She called us and we went out that night looking for her but we didn't see anything. We sat on the curb and talked for a while hoping we'd lure her
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  • 18
    out. We did the same thing last night and sure enough we saw her. She recognized me and started meowing. My fiancé started shaking her food bowl and she came right up to him and he was able to pick
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  • 19
    tabby cat sitting on kitchen counter
    via Krakenimages.com via Adobe Stock

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 20
    her up. People's stories about finding their lost cat kept us going for two weeks. We've barely slept and it was difficult to remain optimistic. So many people suggested sitting and just talking and
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  • 21
    we really think that's what did the trick. Biggest piece of advice I can give is to trust your gut. Statistically speaking, the chances of her being very close to our apartment building
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  • 22
    was the most likely. But based on the amount of people and dogs on the ground floor we had a hard time believing she'd be that close based on her temperament. Sure enough, she was by the leasing office where no
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  • 23
    dogs reside and it's generally more quiet. We also had a hunch that she was in one of the storm drains, so we bought an endoscope and saw a cat in one of the pipes. We weren't sure if it was her at the time, but we saw her 20
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  • 24
    minutes later so we're pretty sure it was. Thank you again to everyone who left advice and kind words. I hope this post helps someone in the future.
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searching weeks meowing found miracle reddit story cat story Lost Cat pawrents pipe return hiding rescued complex apartment original
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