Each year Feline Friends London celebrates National Black Cat Day by highlighting a particular black cat, who has been significant for us in some way. This year the choice was an obvious one: Kuku, the 4-year old black female, who I put in foster in Hillingdon in mid-September 2019, and who escaped out of a first floor window four days later.
Everything was against my finding her. She was neither neutered nor chipped, as we had taken her in hurriedly before we could get her booked in to see a vet, and I knew no-one in Hillingdon, 20 miles from my home. There was no sign of her on the estate where she went missing and the nights were drawing in, meaning fewer hours of daylight. I had never seen the cat myself and only had poor quality photos to use on a poster. I didn't even have a contact number for her owner, who had handed her over to the member of the public who asked us to find her a home.
I will never forget my first journey to Hillingdon on a cold and wet Friday night in late September, carrying a heavy heart along with a cat carrier, through the almost deafening whoosh of the cars speeding along the A40, as I walked out of Hillingdon station and into the dark, rainy night.
Thus began a six and a half month search, involving numerous trips to North Hillingdon from my home in Stoke Newington, putting up posters, leafleting homes and getting to know some extraordinarily helpful and caring people. Friends, including new friends made in Hillingdon, helped in my search and kept a look-out for Kuku. In late October there seemed to be sightings of her that inspired a glimmer of hope and motivated me to take over two cat traps that I placed in strategic places. Still I caught no sight of the elusive Kuku.
When asked by a friend how long was I going to keep on searching. I replied that I would never give up. The cat never left my mind. I went to sleep thinking about her and she was the first thing on my mind as I awoke, remaining with me throughout everything I did. I anguished whenever the weather was cold or wet and worried about where she would find food and shelter.
Along the way we took in two sweet black female cats after kind people responded to our posters, thinking they might be our missing Kuku, though they turned out not to be.
The first week of lockdown, Sarah Clayton, who had become invaluable in my search for Kuku, called me one morning and told me to sit down. I feared something had happened to the little cat Sarah was fostering for us. Fortunately, the cat was fine. Instead Sarah gave me the news I had longed for. Kuku, by now pregnant, had been found around half a mile south from where she had escaped, and taken in by the wonderful Helen Cox, owner of Catkins Cattery in Iver, Bucks. It turned out to be just in time, as a few days later Kuku gave birth to four beautiful kittens.
The vet Helen took her to, said had Kuku been stray much longer and delivered her kittens outside, the thing I feared most would have happened, she probably would not have survived, so malnourished was she.
I will be forever grateful to the people in Hillingdon who helped with my search, including Sarah Clayton, without whom I would never have known Kuku had been found, and Alistair Townsend at Uxbridge Vets who treated Kuku. Most especially I would like to thank Helen Cox, who rescued a heavily pregnant but skinny and malnourished Kuku and cared for her and her four cheeky kittens, without doubt saving hers and their precious lives.
Through our journey to find Kuku, and with the support of local people, and vet practices we have come to use, Feline Friends London has been able to help a number of stray cats and kittens from Hillingdon, something it plans to continue.
The story doesn’t end there, however, as a couple of weeks ago Kuku, now renamed Kiume, was welcomed into her new home, only a few minutes from my house.
