Sparta's Grand but Short Adventure

It is yet to be determined how much of a hand Sparta had in the beginning of his own adventure, but last night after 11:00, Sparta escaped from the trailer!
Almost on the brink of deep sleep, I heard the end of a loud slap and slightly woke.
"Baby, are you ok?" Stuart called from the living room behind my closed door.
"Yeah," I answered groggily not knowing why he was asking. My brain had still not put together what had happened. In fact, my sleepy mind had decided that Stuart had come into my room to smack a fly or two with the flyswatter. Still... something nagged at me, and I sat up in bed to find my box fan on the floor and the screen of my open window to be bent in half. Frantically, I leaped out of bed and literally clawed my stuff from under my bed searching for Sparta. He wasn't there. He wasn't under the desk. He wasn't squatting in his litter box. No, my crazy cat had jumped out the window to freedom in the pitch dark!
"Sparta's outside!" I cried to Stuart, throwing open my bedroom door as I threw on some clothes. Stuart leaped from the couch and immediately headed outside. After one more sweep of my room, I joined him, and we began calling for kitty.

The area around my house is not the most ideal place to look for a cat in the pitch dark with two small flashlights between us. The other thing, Sparta was scarily quiet. Usually when he's outside, he meows and caterwauls to nature throughout the whole walk at the end of his leash and blue harness. This time... nothing! That little conniving cat was staying purposefully quiet so he could stay outside longer. We called out his name; I even had his favorite treats with me and shook the bag to get his attention.
I walked around the trailer with its side wooden fence that he could have easily avoided and the brush that covers the steep slope that leads right to the fast-moving river. I didn't think he'd be that stupid and only glanced at the area briefly. Stuart and I both combed our landlord's land next door where his two greenhouses and workshop sit. The land is covered in high grasses, shrubs, various junk, and A MILLION places for a cat to hide. It didn't help that one of the greenhouses had its door propped open, and it was necessary to search among the rows of various plants for a brindle and white cat with a red collar. That was definitely a relief for me... he had his collar on with my cell phone number printed at the bottom of his little gold tag!

I had many thoughts running through my mind, but none of them amounted to anything close to panic.
Thought #1: I need to call my friends at the Jackson County Animal Shelter tomorrow and give them a description of Sparta.
2: I'm not going to get any sleep tonight if we can't find him, and I need to be prepared for that.
3: Tomorrow morning, I need to make posters and go to WCU's library to print them before hanging them up around the area and putting them in my neighbors' mailboxes.
4: Call my landlord in the morning to let him know he might see Sparta and to please call me.
5: I should have put on better shoes. 
6: We will find him!
Remember that major change I talked about yesterday? In my mind, this was a test. I had no doubt in my mind that we were going to find Sparta. It was truly a test of my faith, and I prayed every second.
Suddenly, Stuart called out as I swept my flashlight through some shrugs lining the dirt road.
"Baby, come here... and don't run!"
We slowly approached, and for several moments, I still could not make out Sparta in the darkness and hoped that Stuart was calling me over because he found the cat not because we were about to take on an angry raccoon or possum.
And there he was with his ringed tail in the air prancing about in the wet grass without a care in the world across the street in the neighbors' yard. As we approached, Sparta hopped up onto a fallen log and scratched his claws like a happy kitty before prancing just out of reach. We cornered him in front of a different trailer across the street. Teasing him with chicken-flavored treats, I was able to bribe him over and after one missed grab, I scooped up my kitty and walked him home.

Slumped back into bed in my now stuffy room, I decided the hamster would have to deal without access to her high rise that night, and I let Sparta rule the house for the night in order to get more air in my room (I still don't have a working window screen so I don't know what I'll do tonight). I was about to become super comfortable in my bed when a thought occurred: my cat just walked around in a wooded area in the summer.
"Stuart, can you check Sparta for ticks?"
In the end, we both held down the cat while I cleaned out his filthy foot pads and combed his fur looking for ticks. He was clean, thankfully.
Then that no-good cat bawled, meowed, caterwauled, wailed, and had an all-out fit for the next half hour because he wanted to go back out into the dark, the cold, the wilderness with its foxes, possums, other cats, free-roaming dogs, hawks, and all sorts of animals.... After all that trouble, he wasn't the least bit pleased to have been rescued. What an ungrateful cat!!!