FROM GREECE WITH LOVE
When a stray cat in Corfu stole her heart, Kimberly Sims just couldn’t forget her, so decided to bring her home.
Kimberly Sims tells of how she brought a street cat home from Corfu to the UK.
My daughter and I went on holiday to the Greek island of Corfu and on the second day of the trip, we were woken by an insistent meowing from outside our apartment door. My daughter went to open it and found a beautiful little tortoiseshell cat who politely waited outside, although it was obvious she wanted to come in.
We didn’t have much but we gave her something to eat, and she then sat with us while we lounged about on our veranda.We eventually went out for the day but she waited for us near the apartment, greeting us with little chirrups. She seemed so friendly that we looked forward to coming back to see her. I bought cat food to feed her with, which she appreciated, but what was interesting was that after she’d finished it, she just seemed happy to sit near us. Our week was soon up and as we left, our little cat was sitting in the middle of some shrubbery outside the apartment, watching us go.
SECOND VISIT
I couldn’t forget this little cat and engineered another week out there a couple of months later, this time with my husband. But on arrival, it quickly became apparent that a small feral community had moved in.
I went out looking for ‘my’ cat and eventually she did come by, dodging the feral group that she was clearly frightened of and making a beeline for inside the apartment.We let her in and fed her the cat food I’d brought.The next day, she again braved the gang and meowed at me to follow her to a drain gully behind the apartment where she showed me what I realised was her kitten. The day we left, she was too nervous to come back and I was very sad to leave her.
By now, it was the end of September and I couldn’t stop thinking about this little, friendly, beautiful cat. A plan began to form in my head of perhaps going back to rescue her. Unfortunately, we also have two dogs who cannot abide cats and so I thought maybe I could rescue her and find a proper home for her. I began to make some preparations, including printing off the photos I’d taken of her on our first holiday. Just taking an animal in Greece would be illegal but if there is no owner, a cat can be rescued if it is clearly trying to get by on its own. I made some signs in Greek with her photo on asking anyone to get in touch if they owned this cat.
I flew back out there on one of the last direct flights of the season — fighting off some opposition from family and friends as it was my birthday. The apartments we’d stayed at were now closed for the season, so I had booked alternative accommodation. I hired a car and drove to the resort, arriving late afternoon. There were probably slightly fewer cats around at this point in the season, as they’d wisely moved to where they were more likely to scavenge food.
After finding a taverna open to have my solitary birthday evening meal, I wandered back to near my old apartment and found a little, fairly shy, black cat that I remembered had sometimes been lurking near my tortoiseshell. I put down a little food for the black cat but I wondered where ‘my’ cat was.
ON THE SEARCH
I put up the notices I’d made on olive trees and went back to my booked apartment. The next day was beautiful so I went in search of the tortoiseshell. I walked around
all the areas where I thought she might be, some quite wild and scrubby, through olive tree groves and little houses, until I reached the shoreline. I stopped to get a coffee and to call my son. His wife is a vet and they adopted a cat through Cats Protection. Despite being cat lovers, I think they still thought I was mad, but my son advised me to go back up to my summer holiday apartments and wait outside there.
I had my Kindle, the weather was lovely, and the view was stunning, so it was going to be no great hardship! I was convinced that she was still alive but where she was, I just didn’t know. After just a few moments, I heard a little chirruping noise from the nearby steps to the apartments and there she was, running down those steps towards me! I could barely believe it, but I knew it was her; she has a very prominent ‘bib’ of pale yellow against her tortoiseshell coat.
I was overjoyed to see her. She was clearly starving and could hardly wait to get at the food I’d brought her. I had no time to waste. I picked her up and put her in the pet carrier I had brought with me. I gathered everything up and left food for the little black cat, and then climbed the more than 180 steps back up to my car, with plaintive mews coming from the carrier all the way up!
HOMEWARD BOUND
On arrival back at my apartment, I let her out of the carrier. She jumped out and immediately started purring. I fed her again — she was absolutely starving. Like many cats there, she was fairly emaciated but I didn’t want to overfill her. I got her to the vet’s the next day. They confirmed she’d had a kitten and was now about ten months old. I’d noticed she had been holding one of her paws up. It turned out that a jagged stone had lodged in one of her paws which the vet removed, bandaging up her foot and giving her a course of antibiotics. She was probably not far off contracting septicaemia if I hadn’t got to her in time. She was scanned for a microchip — obviously there wasn’t one — so she was microchipped with me as her owner and given her rabies jab.
The Pet Passport was ready the next day and very kindly, a local cat charity looked after her for a month as I flew back to the UK. In November, I flew back to bring her back to the UK. I booked a flight from Corfu to Athens, which transferred at Athens to Paris. This meant she could travel in a soft carrier under the seat in front of me. I inveigled my husband to drive over to Paris to pick us up and bring us back via Eurotunnel. As we live in the south of England, it wasn’t too bad and the journey took about
19 hours in total.
My dogs took about six months of training to accept her but now they all sleep together! She is 100 per cent worth all the effort we went to and we named her Kede. She is very loving and affectionate, even more so three years on.