The pattern: hiding nearby beats travelling far
Owners picture a lost cat striding steadily away, but most cats do the opposite. Faced with unfamiliar noise, smells and open ground, a cat's instinct is to find the first tight, covered hiding place and stay in it, silent, sometimes for days. Indoor cats who escape are the extreme case: they have no outdoor territory of their own, feel exposed the moment they are outside, and commonly hide within a short distance of the door they left by, in the nearest garden, under the nearest deck, shed or parked car, or inside an outbuilding they slipped into unnoticed.
What changes the range a cat covers
Temperament and experience set the pattern. A confident outdoor cat who knows the neighbourhood may range across its normal territory and a little beyond it, following the routes, walls and gardens it already patrols, and it is more likely to come home under its own power once whatever startled or detained it has passed. A timid cat, an indoor cat, or a cat lost away from home, for example after escaping a carrier at a new address or near a veterinary practice, behaves like a displaced animal: it hides near the point of loss rather than navigating anywhere, because it has no map to navigate by.
Search close ground like it is the whole search
Begin with an exhaustive search of your own property and the properties immediately around it, at cat height and cat scale. Look under decks, porches, sheds and cars, inside garages, greenhouses and outbuildings with permission, behind stored items, in woodpiles, under dense shrubs and in any gap a cat could wedge into, using a torch in daylight too because eyes shine back from dark corners your gaze slides over. Repeat the search at dusk and later at night, when a hidden cat is more likely to move, eat or answer, and search the same ground again on following days; cats shift hiding places and a spot checked empty on the first evening may hold her later.
Leave familiar scent and food near home, keep a point of re-entry open if you safely can, and ask every neighbour in the closest ring of houses to check their own buildings rather than simply keep an eye out. Checking is an action; watching is not, and trapped cats are found by actions.
When and how to widen the search
Broaden in an organised way if the close search and the first nights bring nothing: extend your asking, posters and online appeals street by street, follow up every sighting by checking whether it fits her description and pattern, and remember that a cat reported some way off may be a similar-looking local cat, which is common enough that you should seek a photograph before moving your whole search. Keep the home base running even as you widen, because a displaced cat may work her way back toward familiar scent over several nights, and most recoveries still happen near home or near the point of loss rather than at the edge of an ever-growing circle.
Let nearby people search with you
The geography of a lost cat is an argument for neighbours: the ground that matters most is other people's sheds, gardens and garages, and the eyes that matter are theirs at the hours you are asleep. Mobilising the streets immediately around home is therefore not a backup to searching close; it is the same strategy, extended. KinsLe's Lost Pet Alert System does that mobilising for free, alerting nearby members that your cat is missing and letting a finder or neighbour message you directly the moment she is spotted, so the close ground around home gets watched around the clock.