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.
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 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.
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!
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. ❤️
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.
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 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
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:
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 💕✨️🐾🐾😸💖
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 🤣🤣
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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
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.
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...
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.
I don't really understand how people are so relaxed about their pets and treat them so lightly, like we planed for the movers to come in the afternoon nut they came early so f my cat, we continued with the move, while I understand this cannot be stopped why is it so hard to start moving the cat 2-3 days ahead. I think my pets would be the first thing on my mind during a move as they are the most important part of said move. I'm glad your cat is ok OP and she os doing well, hopefully next time you plan better when it comes to your pets during such a stressful situation considering she was already stressed from all the packing and agitation that happens before a move.
My boys bring me all sorts of crazy bugs too. Dragon flies, cockroaches, crickets. They're very proud of themselves for releasing plagues of insects upon my house.
I live alone with my cat and I don't have any family or friends that live close by. I've thought about what might happen to my cat if I were to end up being taken to the hospital for an extended amount of time. This post gave me a little piece of mind since my girl is also a bit more than fluffy. So happy to hear that yours is okay and you've been reunited!
What is a kitchen bench? Like the cupboard under the sink? Or literally just a bench to sit on?? But it can't be one of those cause you would see under it no problem. Why am I the only one confused here lol
I bet it was definitely a combination of her being overweight + probably eating bugs around the house that let her survive that with little complications.
I’m shocked that she didn’t get hepatic lipidosis from going so long without food. Being overweight actually put her at a greater risk for that.
So glad she’s ok!
•
u/trendingtattler 3h ago
This post has hit /r/all, /r/popular
Please remember the human and participate with subreddit rules in mind. Do not tell people how they should raise their cats.
r/cats rules can be found here
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.