I appreciate the kind words and support guys, thank you. I didn't realise how attached i was to him until he went missing. I feel very fortunate because on many occasions stories like mine don't always have a happy ending.
I believe the phrase is as follows, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”, and I’ve found it to be true and now so have you. One of my cats managed to get out in the middle of the night somehow and I was out there for several hours until well past midnight with a flashlight and making a clicking sound with my mouth that I call them with until he finally showed himself.