My husband has a cat on SL and it ran away. But all the doors were shut. How does that happen?

[RayRebel]

My husband and I have a cat here on SL. and while all the doors are shut he still got away. How does this happen?

[Madelaine McMasters]

Hi Ray,

The short explanation is that SL cats are like RL cats.

The long explanation is that glitches in SL allow strange things to happen. Server lag might cause the physics collision computations to delay long enough for the cat to pass through a wall or door. Now your challenge is probably to find the cat. Go to the Build menu and select "Linksets" (or Pathfinding->Linksets) and click on the top of the Owner column. That will sort everything by owner name, and you should be able to find the cat and take it back into inventory, which turns it into Schrodinger's Cat.

Happy Hunting!

ETA: I like Rolig's answer better than mine, though I'm reminded of a wandering dog a friend had that was scripted to accept home coordinates and a range specifying how far it would wander from the set spot. Unfortunately, the home and range commands were delivered via chat on channel 1. Quite a few things run on channel 1 and so it was not uncommon to find the dog rummaging around on the ocean floor.

If your cat really is scripted to bounce off walls and such, Rolig is right and you'll never keep it home. If it's scripted to stay within range of a home coordinate, be prepared to go hunting for it now and then. Even if it's not vulnerable to chat commands, everything is vulnerable to gremlins.

ETA2: Even if your doors and walls are not phantom, it's possible that the doors are opened by others when you're not online. I usually log-in to find the doors to my lighthouse wide open.

[Rolig Loon]

I'm guessing that either the cat or your walls are phantom.  That's especially likely if the cat is moving around with Keyframed Motion, which is how I would probably move a cat.   I suppose it's also possible that it strayed outside its scripted area and was returned to your husband's Lost & Found folder, but bet on a phantom cat first. 

The bottom line is that doors in SL are there for decoration.  They won't stop much.

[RayRebel]

Thank you. I will have my husband do this when he returns. thank you so much for your help!

[RayRebel]

Thank you! I'll have him check when he gets home!