Twice in our 17 years together, I lost Cali. The first was when I was living in Columbia with my ex-husband Dan. We had a little townhouse in a fourplex. He was home one rainy, cold spring day, sick. Sometime during the day, he opened the front door, reached out and got the mail. When he did that, Cali must have run out, unknown to Dan. After a couple hours of my returning home from work, I started looking for her. Not finding her in the house, we started getting really worried and walked around the neighborhood calling her on that cold, rainy evening for a long time. We went to bed sick with worry, putting a box and food out on the front step.
After more unsuccessful looking the next morning, I went to work, returning as soon as I could to look some more. Dan made up fliers and we met at our house. I walked inside and heard a meow. I looked all around and could not find it, but it seemed to be coming from the center of the main floor. We realized it was coming from under the floor. We ran outside and opened a plywood door to a crawl space that runs under the building and found Cali sitting under our apartment. She had pushed the crawlspace door open and went in, but could not pull it back open to get out.
The second time happened just a few years ago. Cali and I moved to San Francisco. On the way there, it was just she and I in my Escape. She spent most of the trip under my seat. The majority of my stuff (furniture, household items, clothes) was arriving about 10 days after I got there, being delivered by my dad and step-mom who were driving out pulling a trailer. When they arrived, I had hired movers to hall it all up to my second floor apartment. While that was going on, I had put Cali in the bathroom and closed the bathroom door. When the movers left, I noticed the bathroom door standing open. The front door had been open the whole time we were moving stuff in. I panicked and searched the apartment, not finding Cali anywhere. I looked all over the grounds around my building and two on each side. I looked it crawlspaces, electrical closets, and anywhere else I could think, and could not find her anywhere. I was absolutely scared to death, not knowing where she was. I have no idea how long I searched, but I came back inside to get ready to go to dinner. My dad went into the bathroom and came out saying he heard a cat but couldn't find her. The amusing part of that is that my dad doesn't hear all that well. I went into the bathroom and found Cali in one of the small vanity drawers. She had pulled open the vanity cabinet and crawled in the drawer from the inside. There was barely room for her to curl up in the drawer but there she was. I was so relieved I started crying.
There are a mom and four babies. They might be living in the brush pile by the invisible shed (a whole other story. I will post a picture of it sometime). Of course, just before those pictures were taken, I am running around frantically finding the camera and lenses! They are taken from my kitchen window, through the window, so the quality is a little off. I purposely have left a screen off one of the windows for my passion for photography of the critters in my yard, but she ran off as soon as I got it open. We originally took the screen off to keep the squirrels from climbing it to get to the bird feeder. 
I saw this guy out by the hot tub as I was coming downstairs to post this. Figured I should memorialize him before he becomes dinner! :) 
