Holly is a beautiful friendly but slightly cautious cat - though can easily be tempted with some nice treats. A natural hunter by instinct, with very sharp eyes and quick instincts when something catches her eye.

She's lived with her half brother, Ozzy, happily for 10 years. They are basically domestic cats with limited and supervised use of the garden so not really used to roaming long distances. Holly had just come back from the vets the previous weekend with a clean bill of health. Holly is the brighter one of the two, so it was a real shock to realise that she must have sneaked out of the door when I was tending to the garden, and the next morning, she was not yowling for her breakfast as normal. It was like she's just vanished into thin air.

Of the two, Ozzy is the one more inclined to hole himself up timidly in a shed and I would put money on Holly making her way home more easily - but didn't happen this time.

The weather has been reasonably mild with the onset of summer, so hopefully she's safely holed up somewhere. We've flyposted the neighbourhood, put posters on lamposts and in local shops, called vets and RSPCA, gone on evening and morning trawls of the neighbourhood, but to no avail. Some people have called with potential sightings - but to not avail - the one where the cat was still there was for a different tabby.

The household is distraught. Ozzy is a comfort but also rather depressed at the moment. He wonders if a minor spat when he chased her round the house a couple of evenings previously might have upset her an caused her to wander a bit too far.