The Surviving Pet When a Housemate Animal Is Missing: What Is Known, and What Nobody Has Measured

No study covers a surviving animal whose housemate is missing; the published research is all about death. If the animal still at home has stopped eating, call your veterinarian today, and treat a cat as urgent. Otherwise keep the routine as steady as the search allows and offer comfort when the animal seeks it. If you are the one in distress, the 24-hour lines come first.

Talk to Someone Now

These three lines are open 24 hours a day, every day, and the instruction for immediate danger is printed with them. The numbers and wording below are from each organization’s own website as of August 20, 2026.

Disaster Distress Helpline. SAMHSA’s page for this line (last updated 09/26/2025) says: “Call or text 1-800-985-5990.” In Spanish, the same page says: “Llama o envía un mensaje de texto 1-800-985-5990 presiona “2.”” For Deaf and Hard of Hearing ASL callers it says: “Please text or call the Disaster Distress Helpline at 1-800-985-5990 using your preferred Relay provider.” SAMHSA says the service is available 24/7 to U.S. residents in emotional distress related to natural or human-caused disasters, and that you do not need to give identifying information. The counselor may ask for some basic information at the end of the call, but these questions are optional.

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call 988, text 988, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. The Lifeline says it is available 24/7/365 and that conversations are free and confidential.

Veterans Crisis Line. Dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255, or use the chat option. The site says you do not have to be enrolled in VA benefits or health care to connect.

If anyone is in immediate danger. Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine’s pet loss resource page says: “If at any point you are experiencing a mental health crisis and/or feel like harming yourself or someone else, please call 911 or your local emergency service.” That is Cornell’s instruction, and this page repeats it because it is correct.

Talking to a licensed mental health professional about this is a reasonable next step at any point, including now. If what you need is practical disaster help rather than counseling, SAMHSA’s Disaster Distress Helpline page also points readers to 211 for information about disaster-related evacuations, shelters, food and clothing distribution, volunteer opportunities and other referrals. The pet-loss lines, a narrower kind of support with limited hours, are further down.

The house you are actually standing in

One animal is not accounted for. The search is still running: reports are filed, the microchip record is live, someone is walking the block at dusk with a flashlight. And the animal that is still here has changed. It will not eat. It is at the door. It is under the bed and has been since Tuesday. It follows you from room to room in a rental you have been in for four days.

This page is about that second animal, in the case where the first is missing rather than confirmed dead. The published literature does not cover that case. The useful thing this page can do is say what is known, what is not, and which of the things you are watching are a phone call rather than a wait.

What this page is not:

• It does not run the search. Every reporting step, database and facility call is in finding a lost pet after a disaster. The search is the thing that changes the outcome.
• It is not the page for a body, records or decisions. If the animal is confirmed dead, see what to do if your pet dies in a disaster.
• It is not the general escalation framework. How long a displaced animal takes to settle, and when a behavior becomes an appointment, are in pet behavior changes after a disaster.
• It does not cover reunion between cats. Cats separated and then reunited can behave like strangers, which is a different problem; see reuniting cats after an evacuation separation.

This page also will not tell you what your animal is feeling, give you a behavior protocol, give you a duration, rank comfort against routine, or tell you how to feel. This site has no credentialed veterinary reviewer and no clinical authority. Where our own reasoning goes past a source, we say so in the paragraph.

The one instruction that is not interpretive

The Ohio State University Veterinary Medical Center’s Honoring the Bond handout prints a boxed alert:

“If a cat stops eating, this can be a medical emergency. Please contact your veterinarian as soon as possible. If a dog stops eating, alert your veterinarian.”

Reduced eating appears in every study on this page. That makes it the exact sign that is an emergency in a cat, and it would be indefensible to describe it without the alert attached. The alert does not depend on the cause. It does not matter whether you think the animal is reacting to the absence, to your state, to a wrecked routine or to something medical nobody has found. A cat that has stopped eating is a call today.

Three more things belong beside it:

• Medical causes come first. Ohio State says common underlying medical conditions can contribute to behavioral changes and a thorough medical examination may be needed to rule them out. After a disaster the list of candidate medical causes is longer than usual. Ask for the physical examination before any behavioral reading.
• Some signs are not about behavior. No elimination in 24 hours, straining, vomiting, diarrhea that is not transient, self-injury, and any bite or bite attempt are veterinary matters regardless of what else is going on. A male cat straining unproductively is an emergency call at any hour of the night. A cat that will not come out even for food is a veterinary matter, not settling-in. The full list is on the behavior recovery page.
• If you have no veterinarian this week, that is common after a disaster and does not make the alert inapplicable. Finding veterinary care mid-evacuation covers channels for emergency and telemedicine access. Paying a post-disaster vet bill covers funders, most of which pay a clinic directly rather than reimbursing you. Using 2-1-1 to find pet help covers the general routing service and where its coverage thins out.

The evidence base, named and counted

The subject attracts confident writing, and the underlying literature is three questionnaires. All three are owner or caregiver surveys about an animal that had died. Not one observed an animal, and none studied a missing animal. No published study of a missing animal is cited here.

• Walker, Waran and Phillips, 2016 (Animals). A questionnaire distributed through RSPCA publications across Australia and New Zealand and through veterinary clinics in New Zealand: 279 viable surveys covering 159 dogs and 152 cats. Respondents had lost an animal within the previous five years.
• Uccheddu and colleagues, 2022 (Scientific Reports). 426 Italian adults who had owned at least two dogs, one of whom died while the other was still alive. The instrument was the Mourning Dog Questionnaire plus five established scales on the owner’s own bereavement, attachment and outlook.
• Greene and Vonk, 2024 (Applied Animal Behaviour Science). 412 cat caregivers, 452 surviving cats, recruited from online listservs, Facebook groups and a psychology participant pool at a midwestern university (637 were recruited; 412 remained after exclusions). Greene and Vonk describe their work as only the second known exploration of domestic cats’ responses to the death of another companion animal.

The standard veterinary reference does not cover the subject. The Merck Veterinary Manual’s behavior chapters for dogs and for cats do not address the loss of a companion animal. Their only nearby advice is generic anxiety advice that establishing a routine can help. That is why this page offers no protocol: the standard reference does not contain one.

What the studies report

Everything here is owner-reported behavior from households where the other animal had died. It describes what people told researchers, not your animal.

Walker 2016, dogs and cats. The two commonest categories were affectionate behaviors (74% of dogs and 78% of cats) and territorial behaviors (60% of dogs and 63% of cats). Of the animals with a territorial change, 50% of dogs and 56% of cats were described as seeking out the deceased animal’s favorite spot. Dogs were reported to reduce the volume (35%) and speed (31%) of food consumption and increase sleeping (34%). Cats were reported to increase the frequency (43%) and volume (32%) of vocalizations. Of the animals with an affection change, 82% of dogs and 97% of cats were described as demanding more affection or becoming clingier, so the direction was overwhelmingly toward the person. Whether the lost companion was the same species mattered for only one behavior, speed of eating. The paper reports: “The median duration of reported behavioural changes in both species was less than 6 months.”

Uccheddu 2022, dogs. Reported changes were attention seeking increased (67%), playing less (57%), activity reduced (46%), sleeping more (35%), fearfulness increased (35%), eating less (32%) and vocalization increased (30%). When any change was observed, 24.9% of owners saw it for more than 6 months, 32.2% for 2 to 6 months and 29.4% for less than 2 months. No change at all was reported by 13.4% of owners, roughly one in eight.

Greene and Vonk 2024, cats. Surviving cats engaged less in sleeping, eating and playing, and more in seeking attention from humans and other pets, hiding, spending time alone and appearing to look for their lost companions. Note the phrasing: appearing to look for, based on a caregiver rating. Of the 452 cats, 281 had lost a cat and 171 had lost a dog. Closeness mattered: more time spent together in a typical day predicted more caregiver-reported grief-like behaviors and fearfulness, more positive relationships predicted decreases in sleeping, eating and playing, and longer cohabitation predicted more attention-seeking.

Walker’s team took their behavior categories from an earlier unpublished 1996 ASPCA report (Schultz and colleagues) with no journal or DOI. Percentages from that report reach readers second-hand, through Walker.

Study	Sample	Species	What it found on the death-specific element
Walker, Waran and Phillips, 2016	279 surveys; RSPCA publications and 83 New Zealand veterinary clinics	Dogs and cats	Body viewing was tested against whether behavior changed. Viewing did not have a significant impact.
Uccheddu and colleagues, 2022	426 Italian dog owners; Mourning Dog Questionnaire plus five owner scales	Dogs only	Corpse viewing was tested against how long changes lasted. It did not affect duration.
Greene and Vonk, 2024	412 caregivers, 452 surviving cats; listservs, Facebook groups, a university participant pool	Cats only (171 of the 452 had lost a dog)	Witnessing the death was tested against reported change. It was not strongly correlated with reported behavioral change.

The figures are not comparable across rows. The studies used different instruments, response scales and species, and no published work pools them.

The one real finding on this page

All three studies looked at the element specific to death rather than to absence: whether the surviving animal saw the body or the death. All three found it made no measurable difference to what was reported.

Walker 2016 tested body viewing. Its Discussion says: “Our results show that witnessing the deceased animals’ bodies did not have a significant impact on behaviour.” It then extends its own null result to removal without death, and hedges it in the same sentence: loss from removing a companion animal from the household, such as sale or rehoming, “could have a similar impact on behaviour, however further research is required to clarify this”. That hedge is the difference between a finding and a suggestion. The animals were not indifferent to the body: 73% of those shown it sniffed and investigated. In the paper’s results, 158 remaining animals viewed the body, and a chi-squared test against those that did not gave a p value of 0.22, so the two groups looked the same.

Uccheddu 2022 tested corpse viewing against how long changes lasted. Viewing of the corpse, like sex, neuter status, age at death and breed, “did not affect the duration of behavioural alterations, when they occurred.” The paper also notes that domestic dogs typically have no access or only brief access to the corpse. It closes its discussion by suggesting the dogs may be responding to the loss of an affiliate more than to death itself.

Greene and Vonk 2024 tested whether the cat witnessed the death. Whether the animals were related, the surviving animal had witnessed the death, or the number of cats and dogs in the home was not strongly correlated with reported behavioral change.

What this site concludes, and what it does not

Those are three different measures in two species. They should not be added together or described as one result.

What follows is this page’s own reasoning, not a published finding. Every part of a death that is specific to death, as opposed to absence, was tested at least once, and none of the tests came back positive. So there is no published reason to expect an animal whose housemate is missing to respond differently from one whose housemate died, and no published reason to expect it to respond identically. The question has not been asked.

One more difference between your household and every household in these studies: in all three, the outcome was settled before the questionnaire was filled in. In yours, nobody knows, the search is running, and the people in the house are behaving differently in ways an animal can observe. Every paper names owner behavior as a candidate explanation for what the surviving animal did. None observed an owner in the middle of an unresolved search.

Why the rival explanations are not a formality

Each paper names an alternative reading of its own data that would change what you should do about it.

Caregiver report is the base problem. Greene and Vonk say their most serious limitation is that “we relied on caregiver reports rather than direct observations of the animals”. They add that if a death is anticipated, surviving animals may be reacting to cues of illness in the weeks before it. In a disaster disappearance there is no such run-up, which is another reason the published percentages should not be read as a forecast for your animal. That observation is ours, not the authors’.

Projection. Greene and Vonk report that higher caregiver attachment predicted reports of more attention-seeking, which may reflect projecting caregiver grief onto the cats, and that caregivers who experienced greater grief were more likely to report more sleep, time alone and hiding. Caregivers who reported avoidant attachment with the deceased cat reported greater decreases in grief-like behaviors. The reported behavior tracked the reporter in both directions.

Walker 2016 opens its Limitations section on one word, anthropomorphism, and says the owner reports may reflect the owner’s own grief or a change in owner behavior caused by it. It adds that respondents nominated themselves and probably did so because they saw a change, and that owners who believed animals can grieve were likely more willing to respond. Its Conclusions add two rivals with nothing to do with owner interpretation: the changes could result from a reduction in competition for resources, or from changed owner behavior. In a multi-animal household one animal leaving removes a competitor for food, resting places, doorways and attention, and a behavior change is what you would predict from that alone. Walker also offers, for cats, that a change in aggression may reflect a change in hierarchical status, and says further research is required.

Uccheddu 2022 names emotional contagion and stimulus enhancement (the owners’ increased attention to a deceased individual). It also pushes back on projection: the owner scales for attachment, view of life, and view of animals and humans as on the same continuum did not correlate with reported canine behavior changes, which the authors read as meaning the changes are more likely real. But a reduction in the surviving dog’s food intake was significantly more likely where the owner scored highest on a bereavement measure. These are correlations in survey data with at least two explanations, one of them being that a grieving person perceives and reports differently. Neither paper establishes that a caregiver’s grief harms an animal, and this page will not convert a correlation into a verdict about you. If guilt is the loudest part, see guilt after leaving a pet behind.

A discrepancy inside the Uccheddu paper. Uccheddu’s abstract says the time the two dogs spent together had no effect on the surviving dog’s behavior. Its own correlation table shows cohabitation duration positively correlated with three reported changes: playing less, reduced activity and more sleeping. The paper does not explain the difference. Greene and Vonk found the opposite direction in cats for a different variable, so no source supports a flat statement that time together predicts severity.

A limit on all three. All three studies recruited through channels that select for people already interested in the question. The published percentages are the percentages among people who volunteered to answer a survey about animal grief, and nobody knows the figure for a household that never went looking.

Ambiguous loss: a real idea, about the people

The term for a loss without confirmation is ambiguous loss, and it belongs to a named theorist. The American Psychological Association describes Pauline Boss, PhD, as the principal theorist in the study of ambiguous loss, a term she coined in the 1970s and originally applied to families mourning a loved one whose loss was in some way unresolved, like a soldier missing in war. In the same interview she speaks to an owner whose animal has not come home. She says what people want after a loss is certainty of what the loss was, whether a human loss or a pet loss: “where the remains are, and that they’re not just missing in action.”

That is the whole of what this page will do with it.

• It is about you, not the animal. Ambiguous loss is a human family-systems construct. No source cited here applies it to an animal’s inner experience, and this page does not.
• Boss’s guidelines are an intervention. She developed them as a family therapist for clinical and family work. This site has no clinical authority, so it names the construct and hands the human side to the helplines below and to a licensed mental health professional.

Routine and comfort, and why neither wins

A widely repeated idea says the important thing after a loss is restoring the routine and that comfort matters less. No source cited here says that. What exists is both, from named authorities, with no ranking.

The AVMA prints them next to each other. Its Recovering after a disaster list includes: “The disruption of routine activities can be the biggest cause of stress for your pets, so try to re-establish a normal schedule as quickly as you can.” And right after it: “Comfort each other. The simple act of petting and snuggling can reduce anxiety for both people and pets.” It also recommends allowing uninterrupted rest and sleep, and, if you notice signs of stress, discomfort or illness, contacting your veterinarian for a checkup.

Tufts says extra attention. The Cummings School’s section on whether animals grieve says we may never know if animals feel loss the way we do, but that it is clear they respond to the absence of their companions. It lists changes in eating and sleeping, appearing depressed, or constantly searching for a missing friend, and says many will need time and extra attention from loving owners. It is the only cited passage from a named institution that describes a surviving animal in the absence case rather than the death case. Note the register: may, might, we may never know.

Ohio State names exercise, with a condition. Its handout calls exercise “the best non-drug stress reliever you have available for your pet”, says it can also help manage your grief response, and says to consult your pet’s veterinarian and your own family doctor before beginning a new exercise program.

Merck publishes routine as generic anxiety advice in chapters that do not mention companion loss.

One published result cuts against routine disruption being the whole explanation. Uccheddu 2022 says the duration dogs lived together was not predictive of behavioral effects, a relationship one might expect if the results were simply disruption of the dog’s daily routine. Set against the discrepancy noted above, that is a reason not to build a page around routine, not proof that routine is irrelevant.

So: no ranking. Both are published, and a page that picked one would be inventing a hierarchy. The old advice ran the other way, and the current veterinary review position is that comforting a frightened animal does not reinforce the fear, provided the contact is sought by the animal rather than imposed. That is quoted with its source on the behavior recovery page.

A practical note that is ours. A household in the middle of a search generally cannot hold a routine, because the search is eating it. Feeding times slip, walks happen at midnight, someone is out at odd hours. That describes the week you are in, not a failure to follow advice.

What Ohio State publishes for a household one animal short

The Honoring the Bond handout is the only cited document from a named veterinary institution written specifically about surviving animals. Its byline records 2005 authorship, and it is written for pet loss generally, in a veterinary hospital context, not for disasters or an unresolved disappearance.

• Household social structure. It says to watch for changes in the relationships between surviving companion animals, particularly if the surviving pet often looked to the other for direction. If the missing animal was the one the others organized themselves around, that is the closest published thing to your situation. It is a watch instruction, not a fix.
• Separation-type signs, and a cheap way to see them. It says remaining animals may show signs of separation anxiety, including panting, pacing, whining, drooling, howling, barking and not eating treats while alone, and that video can help monitor and record stress levels when your pet is alone. A phone propped on a shelf during an absence gives a veterinarian evidence your description cannot. The thirty-minute length is our suggestion, not Ohio State’s.
• Pheromone products. It says sprays, atomizers and collars may be effective tools for reducing anxiety. See what a pressure wrap and a pheromone actually do for the evidence position.
• Where to take it. For concerns about a surviving animal’s behavior it says to consult your veterinarian, a veterinary behaviorist, or a certified applied animal behaviorist, and it points to Ohio State’s own Behavior Clinic. Its Honoring the Bond services are a no-cost client service for clients of the Ohio State hospital, not a public helpline, so this page does not print its number.

A point that is ours. The handout’s causes were written for a household where an animal died. Where an animal is missing, a response to the loss itself is the one you cannot assume, because no loss has been established. The others, the owner’s state, the change in routine and an undiagnosed medical problem, are fully in play and are the ones you can act on. That is a claim about which explanations are available to you, not about what your animal knows.

The missing animal’s bed, bowl and litter box

People ask most often whether to leave the missing animal’s things out or put them away. None of the three studies, Merck, Ohio State, Tufts or the AVMA gives an instruction on what to do with a missing animal’s bedding, bowls, litter box or toys in the household where the other animal still lives. A veterinary behaviorist may have a view about your specific household.

Two things bear on it obliquely, and neither is an answer. A missing animal’s scent items have a documented use outside, as lures; see does leaving out bedding, litter or worn clothing bring a pet home. And familiar scent is a documented comfort measure for a stressed cat at home, covered on the behavior recovery page. Those point in opposite directions on the same objects. Nothing in the published material makes this urgent, and it is one of the few decisions here that can safely wait.

Escalation, and who is qualified for what

The escalation ladder is the same one that governs any post-disaster behavior change, set out with its references on the behavior recovery page, including the published referral criteria and the line it draws between a behaviorist and a trainer. Your own veterinarian is the first call, and medical exclusion is not a formality: Ohio State and the Merck chapters put a physical examination ahead of any behavioral reading.

Board-certified veterinary behaviorists are Diplomates of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, which publishes a Diplomate Directory and a radius search. The college states that there are currently more than 100 Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorists throughout the world, so not every state or province will have one, and that if you cannot find one in your state you should search adjoining states or provinces. It adds: “Many Diplomates will consult over the phone with your local veterinarian.” The route is a professional-to-professional consultation, not a drive across three states, and your own veterinarian arranges it. If you have no veterinarian, the three pages in the health-alert section above are where that problem gets solved first.

The record that makes any of this useful

You are the only instrument measuring this animal, and you have not slept properly. One dated line a day is worth more than a month of impressions, and a behavior appointment runs on it. Keep it with the rest of the animal’s paperwork; if you run a pet emergency binder, this is a page in it. If the clinic that held the records is gone, reconstructing pet records when the clinic is gone comes first.

• Date, and which address. Which building, and which night in it.
• Ate, or did not. Relative to normal. Refusal is the signal, and for a cat it is the emergency signal.
• Eliminated: where, and what. Note the surface and location for indoor events.
• Settled, or paced. Whether the animal slept at all overnight.
• What set it off. Name the sound, the person or the departure, not just “anxious”.
• How long the reaction lasted.
• What the search did that day. Whether you were out, for how long, and when. This is the column nobody keeps and the one specific to your situation.
• What you tried, including anything that made it worse.

Two more items are not observations: every medication missed or changed since the disaster, with dates, and anything the animal ate or drank that was not its normal food and water. Both are medical questions for the vet, and you will not remember them in three weeks.

Your checklist for the household that is one animal short

• Keep the search running, and keep it separate from this page. See finding a lost pet after a disaster.
• Do not close the microchip record. A live registration is how a shelter three counties away tells you they scanned your animal next week.
• If the animal still at home has stopped eating, call today. A cat that stops eating can be a medical emergency; for a dog, alert your veterinarian.
• Call immediately, regardless of the clock and cause: no elimination in 24 hours, straining, vomiting, diarrhea that is not transient, self-injury, or any bite or bite attempt. A male cat straining unproductively is a call at any hour of the night. A cat that will not come out even for food is a veterinary matter.
• Ask for the physical examination before any behavioral reading.
• If you have no veterinarian this week, use finding veterinary care mid-evacuation, paying a post-disaster vet bill and using 2-1-1 to find pet help.
• Film a short absence to show a veterinarian, as Ohio State suggests.
• Start the one-line-a-day record today, including a column for what the search did that day.
• Watch the relationships between the animals still here, particularly if the missing one was the animal the others took direction from.
• Do not correct the animals for how they are working each other out. Ohio State’s wording is quoted on what to do if your pet dies in a disaster.
• Do both published things and rank neither. Rebuild what routine you can, and give comfort when the animal seeks it.
• Keep the constants portable: the same bed, the same bowl, the same carrier left open with familiar bedding in it, at whatever address you are in.
• If the missing animal comes back and the cats no longer recognize each other, read reuniting cats after an evacuation separation before putting them in a room together.
• Use the helplines, and know the difference between them (below).
• If this is a crisis rather than grief, use the 24-hour routes at the top of this page.

Grief support, and the line between two kinds of help

These are volunteer-staffed pet-loss lines, and none of the three publishes round-the-clock live coverage. Only Cornell says in writing that its line is not a mental health hotline. Tufts and the Chicago Veterinary Medical Association publish no such disclaimer, so treat that boundary as Cornell’s statement. The 24-hour crisis routes are at the top of this page. Details are from each institution’s own site as of August 20, 2026.

Cornell Pet Loss Support Hotline, 607-218-7457. Staffed by volunteer veterinary students trained with professional grief counselors. Cornell publishes no fixed hours: it says hours vary seasonally and asks you to call for current hours. The call is answered through Google Voice, which prompts for your name; to stay anonymous you can say “anonymous” or enter just a first name. Cornell states its own limit: “is not a mental health hotline”. If concerns go beyond pet loss and grieving, volunteers will help you find appropriate resources.

Tufts Pet Loss Support Helpline, 508-839-7966. Staffed 6 pm to 9 pm Monday through Thursday EST, with 24-hour voicemail; calls left on voicemail are returned at the next scheduled shift. Tufts’ page has a section for the situation this whole page is about: the line is not only for people facing euthanasia and death. It says: “Any situation where you find yourself separated from your pet can be a devastating one.” It also notes that animals sometimes stray and never return, and that what makes those experiences so sad is the lingering questions and lack of closure.

CVMA Pet Loss Helpline, (630) 325-1600. The Chicago Veterinary Medical Association describes a free service in which trained volunteers retrieve messages from grieving owners and call back to offer support by active listening, printed materials and referrals. Expect to leave a message. The association also runs a free support group, Wings, which meets by Zoom on the first Wednesday of each month from 7:30 to 9:00 pm; the CVMA page has the email address for the invitation and a 6:00 pm cut-off on the day of the meeting.

Cornell’s page also prints the older ten-digit Lifeline number, and it still works. SAMHSA’s 988 FAQ says that although the 10-digit number (1-800-273-8255) was transitioned to 988 in July 2022, it remains functional and will connect you to 988 Lifeline services. What changed in July 2022 was the name and the arrival of a three-digit route. The crisis routes printed at the top of this page are the shortest current ones; that is a decision about what to print, not a claim that anything else is out of service.

No ASPCA pet loss number is printed on this page. The Tufts page lists an entry labeled ASPCA Pet Loss Hotline, but its link now leads to the ASPCA’s End of Life Care page, which has a Dealing with Pet Loss section and no telephone number. No number is printed here for it.

Limits of the evidence

• Nobody has studied a surviving animal whose housemate is missing. The three studies are about death. Walker 2016 extended its null result to removal without death in one hedged sentence. That is the entire published bridge, and it is a suggestion, not a finding.
• The 1996 Schultz figures cannot be checked. They come from an unpublished ASPCA report and reach this literature second-hand through Walker.
• Greene and Vonk 2024 is behind a journal paywall. The DOI in the Sources box is the citation of record.
• No behavior plan is published here. The Merck chapters do not address companion loss, Ohio State’s handout is a 2005 client-education document written for a settled death, and the three studies’ own authors decline to turn them into advice. This page says what each named authority states and where each one stops.

Where to go next

• The search itself: how to find a lost pet after a disaster is the hub, and the page that changes the outcome.
• If the animal is confirmed dead: what to do if your pet dies in a disaster.
• If any animal in the house is not behaving like itself: pet behavior changes after a disaster.
• If the missing animal comes home and the cats fight: reuniting cats after an evacuation separation.
• If someone else has your animal: proving a pet is yours and reclaiming it.
• If the guilt is the loudest part: guilt after leaving a pet behind.
• If you are still in temporary housing: settling a pet into temporary housing and planning for a multi-pet household.

The rest of the library is indexed on our pet emergency playbooks hub. If anyone is in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency service, and use the 24-hour lines at the top of this page.