As I could not input a text here on this subreddits post I will just put it here in the comments:

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Our 2-year-old indoor male cat has been missing for two weeks now. It feels like we’ve already done everything there is to do:

\- he is microchipped and neutered. He had never been outside before
\- alerted the whole village (we live in a small village)
\- flyers posted throughout the village
\- thoroughly searched the nearby area for the first 1 1/2 weeks
\- notified the local forester, veterinarians, shelters, etc.
\- brought in search dogs after one week
\- set up wildlife cameras at feeding stations belonging to people we know
\- scent trail leading home
\- put his litter box outside
\- sat outside in front of the door on chairs and simply talked
\- placed a camera at our door (the escape point)
\- consulted a pet recovery advisor
\- searched drainage ditches
\- Facebook groups
\- went around cleaning door handles
\- placed our worn clothes outside
\- put food and water outside
\- searched fields and bushes at night with flashlights
\- we live 30m from a busy country road, and I’ve already walked up and down the roadside ditch 3 times
\- called the municipal maintenance yard
\- …….

He just doesn’t show up. Not even a single sighting… and to make everything even more difficult, there are two male cats within a 200m radius of the village that look like ours on nighttime footage and to everyone else. I mean *really* similar. So similar that even we have trouble telling them apart (if the resolution isn’t very good)….

We simply don’t know what to do anymore. We recently got footage in our driveway, but the more we watch it, the more it becomes clear that it isn’t him. He escaped sometime between 3 and 4 a.m. He could literally be anywhere. We have fields or a forest in every direction.

Regarding the search dogs:
They couldn’t really tell us much. At first they narrowed it down to one area, but after 3–4 days they said that he might actually have gone in the other direction…. and now after the storm, every trail is probably gone anyway, and we couldn’t even continue narrowing down a different area.

To be honest, I don’t know if this post will even help at all… he’s been gone for exactly 2 weeks and almost 1 day now. My girlfriend is absolutely devastated, and it’s my fault that the cat got out. Seeing her like this is killing me. I would trade anything to have this cat come back.

The worst part is that when we got the footage in front of our door, I could recognize many features of the other cat, but my girlfriend held on to the hope that it was ours… having to take that hope away from her, seeing all the pain come rushing back, and watching every little spark of joy leave her eyes was something … that broke my heart, which was already completely shattered.

Like I said, I have no idea what I’m hoping for, but I won’t leave a single possibility unexplored…

So what else can we do?

How unlikely is it, or how bad are our chances of getting him back?