Contact local animal shelters and animal control agencies.  File a lost pet report with every shelter within a sixty mile radius of your home and visit the nearest shelters daily, if possible.  Provide these agencies with an accurate description and a recent photograph of your pet.  Notify the police if you believe your pet was stolen. 

Search the neighborhood.  Walk or drive through your neighborhood several times each day.  (Early morning and evening are the best times to look for a lost pet.)  Ask neighbors, letter carriers, and delivery people if they have seen your pet.  Hand out a recent photograph of your pet and information on how you can be reached if your pet is found. 

Advertise.  Post signs at grocery stores, community centers, veterinary offices, traffic intersections, and other locations.  Also, place advertisements in newspapers and with radio stations.  Include your pet's sex, age, weight, breed, color, and any special markings.  When describing your pet, leave out one identifying characteristic and ask the person who finds your pet to describe it.

Be wary of pet-recovery scams.  When talking to a stranger who claims to have found your pet, ask him to describe the pet thoroughly before you offer any information.  If he does not include the identifying characteristic you left out of the advertisements, he may not really have your pet.  Be particularly wary of people who insist that you give or wire them money for the return of your pet. 

Don't give up your search.  Animals who have been lost for months have been reunited with their owners.