Lauren & Lincoln The Cat: Roaming Safely With Tractive
There's nothing more panic-inducing than finding your pet missing from home...especially if you're used to them staying indoors! Here's Lauren Watson sharing her story of finding her missing cat, Lincoln - and why she's convinced Tractive is the best choice for preventing lost pets.
Coming home to find a missing cat is never fun – or so found Lauren Watson, a student at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. But with patience, creativity, and a bit of luck, she was reunited with her buddy Lincoln, in a week.
That time Lincoln went missing when I wasn’t at home…
Lincoln is my 3 year old tuxedo kitty. I’m in my final year of veterinary school and he was actually an employee at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine too. I adopted him two months into vet school when he was 6 months old and retired. (Lucky him!)
More importantly, Lincoln escaped sometime around New Year’s Eve in 2023 – while I was out of town visiting family for the holidays. It wasn’t until the next day that my housemate truly realized his disappearance.
She called me and I made the 4 hour trek back home that same day – but not before calling and updating his microchip and reporting him on every missing animal website and Facebook page I could find. (Including Pawboost.)
When I got home, I panicked – I just didn’t know where to start looking!
Lincoln was an indoor-only cat who had never been outside. Which is why I was advised to search early in the morning (4am) and late at night (11pm).
The first night I got back, I went on a night search by myself in my neighborhood at midnight.
The next morning at 5am, I did the same thing. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much until I found him.
What I did
💡I started making flyers to put on light poles and miniature flyers to put in mailboxes. Everyone in my town likely has my number now!
💡Besides, I also did multiple repetitious foot searches at different times a day and stuffed mailboxes along the way.
💡I talked to every neighbor I passed and told them my story.
💡I took my big flyers and gave one to every veterinary clinic in town, almost all of which had a lost and found display board so that their clients could also see the missing posters. Some clinics offered to tape these fliers in their front window – as did my podiatrist.
Here’s a free Lost Cat poster template you can click to download, print, and edit with your details right away:
Some of the sillier things I did…
🤓 Hung my dirty socks and underwear on my fence in case my scent would draw him home.
🤓 Did a foot search at 11pm with a rotisserie chicken in hand in case the scent would draw him out.
🤓 Covered my car with his missing flyers (which I affectionately called the cat-mobile).
🤓 I even contacted a hoodoo priestess (my friend – not a random hoodoo priestess) for a tarot reading and advice!
As crazy these things were, I was absolutely desperate to find Lincoln.
What I did NOT do
⚠️ A live capture trap. He wouldn’t go near it, I already knew that.
⚠️ Putting his litterbox outside. This is terrible myth that will lead to wildlife and other cats in your yard – not to mention possible spread of fecal-borne diseases.
⚠️ Expanding my search outside of my nuclear neighborhood. I did put up some flyers at my old address, but besides the vet clinics, I knew he wouldn’t walk miles and miles away.
At 3 AM sometime in early January, my neighbor caught a video of Lincoln outside her door.
I was asleep at the time of course, so he’d probably found his way inside through our dog door. At 7 AM, my housemate found him sitting outside my bedroom door.
For 6 days, I was inconsolably sobbing and obsessively searching – and upon finding him, the guilt I felt was immeasurable.
I felt like not only a bad cat mom – but a bad veterinarian. How can an almost-veterinarian lose her cat and not be able to find him?
Of course now, I realize that any person, child, or pet can go missing – and that doesn’t reflect on the family.
Why I needed a way to keep Lincoln safe from harm
Understanding Lincoln’s behavior on a veterinary level, I knew that keeping him inside would be difficult.
He has a newfound roaming tendency – and we have a dog door for the multiple other pets we have in the house.
There’s no way to lock it without negatively impacting all of the other pets.
💡So when I got the email that Tractive was offering a tracker with subscription, I knew that was the best option.
Why I’d recommend the Tractive GPS for all pet parents
With Lincoln’s Tractive tracker, I know his exact location all the time from an app on my phone. I love seeing:
Lauren Watson is a student at the UC David School of Veterinary Medicine – and a happy Tractive user since 2023.
Whenher cat Lincoln went missing, it took her around a week to find him again. After which, Lauren realized she needed a way to keep track of his newfound case of wanderlust.
So with a Tractive device strapped to Lincoln’s collar, Lauren now has complete peace of mind and the assurance she can find him – no matter how far he roams.
And if you’re a cat parent yourself and want to keep your wandering buddy safe, here’s how you can…
Know everywhere your cat goes
See where they are in real-time, no matter how far they go. Get alerts if they roam too far home. Find out where they’ve been and discover their favorite spots. Let others track with you.
