My cat was lost in the garage for (potentially) weeks

Backstory

My wife and I adopted this cat about 4 or 5 years ago.

Little 4month old black kitten(ish?, he was like halfway between new kitten and fully grown)

At the pound, he had his own medium-closet-sized room, away from all the other cats, but seemed like a normal cat. Tiny, playful, came up to us and purred and let us pet him.

So we brought him home, named him, and released him from his cage.

He immediately went and hid behind our couch for HOURS, and from then on was just the most jumpy, sketched out, 'always hiding' cat in existence.

Fast forward to today, and he's still a super skiddish and sketched out cat

He doesn't come out, EVER, and if he does it's just to go use the litter box or eat.

This is just normal for him.

A little less than a year ago we moved, before that though he wasn't AS bad about hiding.

We'd commonly find him in bed with us in the middle of the night or laying down in the corner of the room with an eye on everyone and getting super jumpy if anyone moved a muscle.

But now we don't see him ever.

So I've taken to doing wellness checks on him at least once a week just make sure he's alive and just hiding in our basement as usual, but this last month has been HELL at work for me.

I've been working 60-70 hour weeks, and on top of that we have 3 young children, so I haven't checked on him in a while, just due to it slipping my overly exhausted mind.

Well sometime between a week and 3 weeks ago, my wife said she thought there was an animal in our garage because she heard something move in there, but after I searched I passed it off as her being paranoid.

Fast forward to today, and I get home after another 13-er, come in through the garage, and see him attempting to hide behind a box.

Poor guy must've found his way in there on accident at some point when the garage door was left open and no one was looking (not the big one, the smaller one. It's an attached garage)

So I naturally picked him up a took him downstairs, but this means that my wife was in fact NOT paranoid, and there was in fact an animal in there those weeks ago.

But this also means this poor little guy has been stranded without food or water for that long, and I noticed when I picked him up that he had lost a little weight (not much, but noticeable, as he's a fat cat).

So now we're scared that he may not be okay on the inside.

I mean, honestly I think we're lucky the poor little guy is even alive still.

So I guess my question is, should we take him to get examined at a vet asap to make sure his kidneys aren't shot or something to that nature?

Thanks.

submitted by /u/colutribe
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/mru0t2/my_cat_was_lost_in_the_garage_for_potentially/