Where Have All the Kitties Gone?

This is so sad...

We have two cats who need to find a new home. We've been trying to find a home for them for quite some time, but haven't had any luck. Being responsible pet owners, we have kept them until a good home could be found.

We moved out of the old house Sunday. But the house isn't empty, and we still have possession of it. The basement has a lot of stuff in it, and my fish tank is still there, and the house still needs to be cleaned and painted and so on. We left the cats there, because the allergy situation here is pretty bad, and we didn't want to introduce the dander here and then have to try and clean it all. On Sunday, I left big bowls of cat food and water in the basement for the cats. I didn't see them on Sunday and assumed they were hiding with all the commotion.

I went back on Monday and the bowls had food left in them. I couldn't tell if the cats had eaten any of the food, because it was such a huge bowl, and you know, cats don't eat like dogs do. They don't sit and chow it all down till it's gone. They eat a little at a time.

Yesterday The Hub went in to check them. Once again, he didn't find the cats. I asked if the food was gone and he hadn't checked, because he was looking all over for the cats.

So this morning I went in to check and sure enough all the food was there, looking exactly as it had on Monday. Not touched. The water was full too, and the clean litterbox had nothing in it.
So I panicked and started tearing through things, but no cats. We looked in the dryer vent and the furnace vents, nothing.

The cats are just gone. I don't know if they slipped out on Sunday night when we were moving, but I have to think that's what happened.

I am so worried about them. Mr. Flower's my little baby - he was given to me at just 4 weeks of age and I nursed him to health (not literally) because he was too young to be away from his mother. He had all his claws, but had never been outside before in his life. And Jack - well, Jack was snippy and asshole-ish but he was an alright guy and certainly didn't deserve to be stuck outside defenseless. Jack is declawed and also has never been outside before.

I feel so terrible about my kitty boys. I looked all over outside and went up and down the road to see if they had been hit - it sounds grisly, but I had to know. There's no sign of them. I had The Hub stop back over there on his way to work to leave a couple cans of cat food in the garage and in the house, to see if we can get them to come back. I don't know where in the world they could have gone. They're extremely friendly (well, Jack isn't, but Mr. Flower is, and he and Jack are inseparable) so I am hoping with all my might that they wandered into one of the neighbors' yards. My neighbors are all pretty decent people, except the ones in back who had tons and tons of feral cats and refused to do anything about it. But even then, if they wandered over there i know they would be fed and have a barn to hang out it till I got them back.

Tomorrow I am going to go to all the neighbors and see if they've seen them. Poor guys. My heart hurts to think of them outside, alone and scared and not knowing where their family went.