I have dogs now, but I grew up with cats. Over the years, my family always had at least two cats at a time and though a few needed to be re-homed when they proved not a good fit for our family (or the other cat), we never had to deal with the fear of one going missing.
But what I've learned in the age of the internet is that missing cats are very common and also very likely to simply be due to the cat being a bit of a dick.