I don’t really talk a lot about our pets on the blog, but they are a huge part of our family. We have two cats – Ellie and Daisy, who are both rescue cats. We’ve had Daisy two years and Ellie just over a year. They eat ridiculous amounts of food, sleep on my head and are constantly under my feet, but we wouldn’t be without them now.

A few months after we brought Ellie home from the RSPCA centre, she went out for a mooch in the garden as she always did but didn’t come in when we called her. For two days, there was absolutely no sign of her. We looked all around the area we lived and asked the neighbours to keep an eye out for her. It was absolute hell, and we feared the worse, but in the early hours of the third day, I heard a meow at the window. There she was, back from whatever adventure she had been on.

We were really lucky with Ellie, but it could have been different. A few years ago, we had a cat called Bobby. Shortly before we adopted Daisy, he went out and never came home. We have no idea what happened to him which is what made it really hard. We could come to terms with him not coming back, but not knowing if he had been hurt, stolen or was suffering was really difficult.

If your pet does go missing, whether it is a cat or a dog, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances of getting them home, or at the very least, finding out what happened to them:

• Report your pet missing on the National Pet Register website. You can add their photo, a description and your details in case someone finds them. We were about to do this for Ellie when she turned back up.
• If your pet is microchipped, call the microchip database they are registered with and report them as missing. If your pet is taken to a vet and their chip scanned they will get in touch with you. Don’t forget to keep your contact details up to date!
• Print some posters or leaflets with a picture of your pet and your details then post them through doors in your local area so your neighbours know to look out for them. Ask your neighbours to check their garages and sheds in case they have gone inside unnoticed. Attach the missing posters to lampposts and ask any nearby shops if they could put a poster in their window.
• Put a post on your local Facebook selling or community group. I see lots of these, and there’s quite often a happy ending!
• Obviously, if they have gone missing it’s too late, but something you can do to prevent it is to purchase some sort of tracker – they’re not expensive and you can find some of the best dog trackers on JugDog.

The main thing is not to give up. Whilst it wasn’t a happy ending for us with Daisy, it was with Ellie and we had lots of messages from friends saying their cats had gone on the missing list for months before turning up completely unscathed.