Cat Dumbo found

I've spent an entire month worrying about Dumbo the cat - first his whereabouts, then how to bring him back home and, finally, how to introduce him back to the cats who had driven him out of the house in the first place. I'm pleased to report that I've managed to solve all three problems. With considerable help from the web - had I not read about the experiences of others who lost and found their cats, I might have given up. However, having read about the virtue of patience, incessant search in the close proximity of the cat's home and setting food-baited traps to catch the lost pet, I regained hope and continued searching and calling him early mornings and late evenings, i.e. when cats tend to be most active.

My first sighting of Dumbo took place two days after I had started putting out food at night, which was almost two weeks after he went missing. He emerged from behind my neighbor's shed, thin and scared to death, crawling close to the ground with his ears down, at 6 a.m., heading towards the food bowl. He was actually being led towards it by a free roaming neighborhood cat, who must have first found the food. They both fled back to the neighbor's shed when they saw me, but the food began disappearing from the bowl ever since. Two or three days later Dumbo actually showed up next to me in the garden at his evening meal time! He then began showing up for both breakfasts and suppers, and then one day, when I miaowed at him with the 6 a.m. breakfast bowl in my hand, he emerged from the tall grass bed close to the house, where he was hiding, approached my extended arm and let me touch and pet him profusely! Over the following days we proceeded to have his meals first closer to the house, then in the hallway with the front door open, inside the apartment with the apartment door open, and then, when it was raining, I closed the apartment door when he was inside, eating. 

I first kept him separate from the other cats, whom I locked in the cats' room and was letting outside through the window, while Dumbo had both another room and the hallway to himself, so that he wouldn't feel too imprisoned. After two or three days of this arrangement, he began demanding to go into the other cats' room. I opened the door slightly so that they could smell each other. I instructed them to be good and not fight with each other. They reunited over the following five hours, first staring at each other suspiciously, then slowly approaching. After their first night together in the same room, I found all four cats sharing the same window sill and watching the garden from there. This was two days ago, and exactly four weeks after Dumbo went missing.

As I said at the beginning, the reason he went missing in the first place was because his own mother wouldn't let him back into the house after he first went outside! I was busy working at the time and did not expect that an interpersonal conflict would arise between my cats due to being let outside. Therefore, I heard the queen-mother screaming her lungs out chasing away some cats who tried to enter the cats' room through the open window, but I thought she was dealing with the local feral population. It didn't for a second occur to me that she was chasing one of her own children and companions, the poor Dumbo! Which was actually the case. It must have happened several times, Dumbo trying to return to their room through the window and she chasing him away viciously, and Dumbo got so scared he hid in the neighbor's shed and decided to stay there so that she couldn't see and chase him again.

Dumbo is a bit of a dominant male and it might have been the reason why the queen mother decided not to share her territory - newly enlarged via the open window - with him. I'm so glad I managed to reinstall peace among them and have all four back together. I'll certainly be much more careful introducing any changes to their routine from now on.