Hi,
  When we recently lost a 7 year old neutered tom cat and we did
originally think that he may have got stuck in a neighbour's garage -
like he did once when he was only 1 year old. At that time he had
walked into a garage whilst the family were packing for vacation and a
5AM trip to the airport and ended up inside when they closed the garage
door. It was 5 days later when a passer-by heard him calling and he was
retrived significantly thinner.

 This time we put messages in everyone's mail boxes within 24 hours,
put up signs on utility poles, contacted all the local rescue centers
and vets but it is now more than a week passed and we have given up
home of a simple explaination. He does have an embedded identification
chip, so we may eventually get reunited but it is looking less and less
likely.

 Thinking again - with the benefit of hindsight, how I would have
approached this situation - I came up with an idea that I would post
here in the hope that someone else may find useful.

 If you believe that your wandering cat may have got stuck in a
neighbour's garage, and you don't want to have to knock on all of your
neighbours' doors, then I have another variant of this idea. I had
thought that some my small printed flyers would either become swept up
with all the junk mail and discarded unread, or that the householder
may have gone away on vacation and not have the opportunity to check
for the cat so this is what I suggest:

 Print your message - including the cat's description, date last seen,
and suggestions to look in the garage and other outbuildings, onto a
small self-adhesive label which can be handled by a laser/inkjet
printer - these can be purchased in A4 sheets of 8, 10 or 12 labels.
Purchase a pack of luggage tags and elastic bands and stick one label
onto each tag and thread the elastic band through the hole. Prepare
enough of these to cover all homes in the likely vicinity that your cat
could have reached.

 With the prepared pack of labels/tags/elastic bands, visit each
property and attach a label to the garage door handle of each home.
All you need to do then is to wait for 24 hours and then walk around
the neighbourhood and see which tags are still visible.

 Any tags removed - would likely indicate that the householder has
both seen the message and been in the position to instantly check their
garage. Those houses where tags are still in place after a day or two
should be noted as being possibly where the householder is away - or
very unobservant - and would prompt further observation and discussion
with anyone who would know if they had been around when your cat was
last out.

 I would be interested in any comments on this idea.

Steve
steveharvey [at] dsl [dot] pipex [dot] com