Nice story! So glad it came back to you, I will always wonder what happened to my sweetest girl cat that disappeared one day. Another time one of my cats disappeared for days with no sign of where he went (he wasn't normally a wanderer), and finally I was walking my dog past my neighbors house a few days later and my dog kept pulling my up into their yard, I kept trying to pull her back... and then I heard a cat meow! I let her drag me up to their house and she started sniffing around the base of the house along the edge until she stopped at a vent, turns out he was trapped in their crawl space! I am so glad my dog found him, he might have been dead down there without water after another day. So glad that she was such good buddies with the cats
He is now an old cat and never left the yard again after that
