u/Mynamesnotdaniel

My family’s beloved 2 year old cat Diego has been missing for 3 months & we haven’t been able to find him. I let him out on accident June 28, 2026 around 11:30pm. He followed me outside when I went to water plants in my backyard which I didn’t realize until I watched the camera footage the next day😔 He hung out in the backyard for a couple mins & then wanted to come inside but saw that both of our back doors were closed. When he realized all the doors were closed he started pacing back and forth, climbed the fence and left. We originally put up at least 500 flyers around the city, sent out about 1,000 postcards and letters to neighbors, walked around looking for him every day for the first couple weeks, posted about him online, tried to hire a pet detective but couldn’t find one in my area. We are starting to feel hopeless, I don’t know if he’s gone and I’m looking for a ghost and it’s driving me insane. Not a single neighbor has seen him. Only sightings have been in other neighborhoods half a mile to 1 mile away. Most of them are gray cats that look similar to my cat. We were able to cross a lot of those sightings off. But we were never able to confirm if 5 sightings in the same neighborhood half a mile away were my car or a different cat. We went to that neighborhood half a mile away everyday for weeks and didn’t find a single gray cat in that area. We put up flyers around there but unfortunately 90% of our flyers have been taken down. I live in Redwood City near Woodside Rd & Selby Lane, there’s a lot of wild life around here which I didn’t realize until he went missing and I started paying attention. I rarely see coyotes on my street ever since he went missing i set up a food station outside with a ring camera and I’ll see one pass by once or twice a week at night. If I would’ve known they were active around here I would’ve been more careful, I deeply regret how distracted & careless I was that night. I owe it to him to find him and I don’t want to give up, I don’t want to leave him out there if he’s still alive. I don’t want him in the hands of a bad person with bad intentions, because if someone has him and knows he has a family why wouldn’t they speak up hy now 😔 How can I stop myself from going insane? The thought of a coyote getting him breaks me into pieces, he was so loved and adored he didn’t know what fear or hunger was until I left him outside that night 😞 I just don’t know what happened after he hopped that fence. If a neighbor found him by now I’m sure they would’ve told me they saw how many flyers I put up, most of them got letters from me & I was walking up and down my street for weeks calling his name.. We’re offering a high reward too which honestly has attracted a lot of scammers and pranksters, I don’t know what else to do. I miss him so much, my heart aches for him every waking moment. He was an indoor cat we would let him explore our backyard almost everyday for about an hour supervised. Sometimes he would manage to jump on the fence and go roam around, this happened a few times and whenever I called his name he would return within minutes. I have no idea how he behaved when he explored, but one time I did see him thru my window (before he ever went missing) and he looked like a lil ninja walking super close to the fence looking side to side. I thought it was funny. He knows how to hunt even tho we never encouraged it, so if he is alive and living outdoors I know he would be able to feed himself but the thought of him having to rely on mice and insects is heartbreaking. I want to find him so bad I will never have peace until my baby boy is back 😢😭