The real significance of a pet staying out of doors much longer than anticipated — a cat or a teen, let's say — is in remembering that the whole of this one short life is taken in through five (or more) senses and played out inside of our own being. It is the interplay of electrical and chemical energy in the cells of our bodies that is the magic of our existence, and a lost cat… 

The thought of a lost cat touches here and there, excites this neuron to nudge that neuron, which in turn evokes that memory (of loss), and that memory echoes in the halls of the cortex like some extended game of Telephone — who's there who's there who's there who's there who cares who cares unfair unfair unaware — leaving bits and pieces of distorted sensation in its wake. Which we make sense of in thoughts which usually begin with the two magic words "What if". What if:

• My cat has been eaten? I heard coyotes yapping the night I last saw him.
• My cat is a frozen lump of fur, having stayed out in 3-degree temps for two nights?
• My cat wandered off looking for warmth and became lost?
• My cat has been adopted by another household (relief and loss in the same echoed emotion)?
• My other cat, who loves him, becomes utterly dejected living alone with a human who is rarely home?
• My children start weeping when their cat has not returned?

… and every single thought is the echoing in the cells, all of which experience a common ache of loss. Every moment of every day, and probably every moment of our sleeping hours, can be lived blindly and reactively — in which case the moment keeps us like a slave — or can be lived with awareness and inquiry. Then the moment becomes our teacher, and we learn about ourselves all the time, our wisdom increases. In learning about ourselves, we learn about others. In learning about others, our responses to them become softer, our embraces warmer, and our lives become richer and mellowed.

And now my cat has stayed out another night. I hope he's okay.