Should You Offer a Reward?

Rewards are most important if your lost cat is very outgoing and friendly, a kitten or a high-value purebred.  Rewards are not always recommended for extremely skittish cats because they can encourage people to try and catch your cat.  

Many people WILL keep an eye out for your cat or even help look for your cat without a reward.

I often recommend starting without a reward.  IF you don't get any sightings within a week or two, then you can consider adding a reward.  This can also be a way to generate new interest in your search.

Pros and Cons of Rewards

Pros to Offering a Reward

  • People are used to seeing loose cats and often ignore them.   Offering a reward can get people to notice cats AND call you.
  • Some people may do a more thorough check of their own properties for your cat.
  • A reward can encourage someone to return your cat if they were thinking about keeping them.

Cons to Offering A Reward

  • People may try and catch your cat and end up chasing them away.  Fortunately, most cats won't run far.  Adding "Shy! - Do NOT Chase" to your poster may help.
  • People may not report sightings because they want to try and catch your cat themselves. Adding Reward "for information leading to return" may help.

What to Offer for a Reward

Whether or not you include a specific reward amount on the poster is up to you, but if you do not put an amount, people will either call you asking what the reward is or they will probably assume the reward is not very much - unless you put something like "large cash reward".  

I generally recommend reward amounts between $100-$500.  Larger rewards can attract the attention of scammers.  If multiple people provide information that leads to the capture of your lost cat, then best practice is to divide the reward among them.

If you strongly believe that someone has your cat, you might consider offering a very large reward "for their safe return" and "no questions asked."  However, I generally do not recommend including the word “stolen” on your poster.  People are less inclined to get involved when they believe a pet was stolen unless it is something high profile like a car theft with a pet inside.

Avoiding Scams

Coming soon.