I'll never know what happened. Thats making me crazy.

On Feb 17, our cat Jet Jaguar got out of our apartment in
Oberammergau , Germany and vanished into the night. My wife and I
spent hours with flashlights combing the neighborhood for him almost
every night. I put his cat carrier outside the building with his toys
and one of my shirts and his sleeping mat in it with his favorite food
in hopes that it would attract him to come back. I live and work in a
multinational NATO community so I printed up signs with his picture
asking if anyone has seen him and to call me if they do. I put these
signs all over the place. Some of the local german citizens offered to
help me look for him.

No one had seen him. I was really beginning to feel that I would never
see Jet Jaguar again. I hoped he was alright wherever he was but I
felt that perhaps he didn't want to live us anymore and thats why he
never came back. We have 2 other cats that are female and they regard
Jet coolly. He wasn't nuetered when we first adopted him so he
naturally made the 2 girls uncomfortable. Even after he was fixed they
were antsy around him, though he really only wanted to play. Still, I
missed him.

Last night at around midnight I heard the other 2 cats crying and
meowing loudly. I got out of bed and looked in the living room. Our
front door had been left cracked open a bit because my wife was out
with friends and didn't have her key. The inner door was shut, but has
a big glass window in it. Jet was pressed up against the glass with
his paws looking inside! I was so happy to see him!

As soon as I let him in and gave him the obligatory big hug, he ran
straight to his food bowl and greedily woofed down everything in it. I
could see he'd lost a lot of weight and looked like he had had more
than a few nights of sleeping rough. (I gave him a quick bath too just
in case he came back with fleas)

Heres the thing...where did he go? What did he do? There are at least
2 other cats that I see roam the neighborhood from time to time, but
someone must own them....both are too well fed looking and groomed
(and friendly enough to let people near and pet them) to be strays. I
never saw Jet with them and i assumed thats why he wanted out in the
first place, to run with the outdoor crowd. Did he get lost that night
on the 17th and it took him this long to find his way home? Or did he
just get tired of not getting regular meals and having his nice warm
cat tree to sleep on? Did he maybe come by at night (someone did eat
the food left out for him) but so late that no one was awake to let
him in? Or maybe had a great adventure? did he miss me?

I'll never know because he can't talk....and that makes me sad, too. :(