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My cat comes from two home cats with English shorthair father and Russian blue mother. I live in an apartment and he enjoys walking through the corridor and sniffing everything.

The problem I have is that sometimes he wanders to another floor and goes at the wrong door there. (Same location to mine vertically).

I can pick him up and bring him back with relative ease but he gets extremely stressed during the process and I can feel his heart thumping rapidly.

How can I teach my cat to navigate between the floors and return home on his own?

Answers to comments

I am nearly certain that no feeding occurs with my upstairs neighbour as he seems extremely scared and he tends to get lost in either upper or lower floor compared to mine though i'll check on them to make sure.

My cat is three years old and he's not spaded as i thought that it wasn't needed since he never meets with other cats and if i remember right i got him when he was 3 months old. (Might be off a month)

I also occasionally pick him up for some cuddling and compared to our cuddling time his heart is much faster when i pick him up in front of another door.

This is hard to answer,I think you will have to do some experiments.

If your cat have a toy or object he likes you might try to put this outside your door so he can smell his own scent to make him recognize he is at his home.

Cats in general do know their area by sight and by scent,there is many examples of cats living in an multi apartment building and not having any problems in finding the right door to where they live.

I think one of the things you need to do is to visit the vet to see if your cat have any problems smelling or if it might have eye problems,This is to be sure it is not a physical problem of your cat.

If nothing physical is wrong with your cat you can try to mark your apartment by putting up a visual marker and/or a scent marker for your cat outside your door to help him locate his home,This object can be to simply move the wellcome mat from inside to outside your door or it can be to hang one of your cats toys on the door so he can reach and smell it.

Our cat had the same problem.

We had only two apartments per floor and we happened to live all the way up; so you'd think there was some visual aid to go on. Still, whenever she went exploring downstairs and eventually entered panic mode when she stopped feeling comfortable, she ran only 1-2 floors up, mistook the door, and either had to be picked up or chased up another floor, only for the procedure to repeat.

Like you describe, this visibly stressed her out. Nobody was opening the door to her presumed home, right? She wasn't very clever to begin with, though.
Regardless, the staircase was quite sterile and from a cat's viewpoint, everything may have looked the same.

We never tried to find a solution, but perhaps you should get a unique looking floor mat and give it a strong, unique scent - preferably something she already knows. Also, perhaps there is some way to mark the right floor at the staircase, should it be far apart from your door.