Bill, I too am pretty sure he will be out when he feels like it. I have had cats do that same thing. One regularly got into the attic and he would crawl down between the walls.
This is a true story about a cat, not one of mine but it happened at my house. We had a new HVAC unit installed under the house in a crawl space. The door to the crawl space was open all day while the guys worked under there.
A few days later as I came home from work a strange cat came up to me as I got out of the car. It meowed at me and was clearly trying to get my attention. I did not recognise the cat and I ignored it. This went on for several days, it even tried to get in the door to the house with me. All I could think of was this was a weird cat. Eventually it gave up and I forgot about it. About 6 weeks later I was outside and I glanced at one of the vents to the crawl space and saw two eyes looking out at me. YIKES, there is a cat under the house. It apparently got locked in there when they were working under the house 6 weeks earlier. It was too scared to come out so we did the water and tuna fish thing. It took a while, close to a day, but eventually it came out, skinny and scared but alive. We never did find out who owned those cats. We guessed the cat that was seeking my attention knew the other was stuck. Amazing animals.
