LONDON – A Grenfell Tower survivor has finally been reunited with the cat that she believed had been killed in the devastating blaze.
Kerry O’Hara, who is 53, told the Guardian that she managed to escape her flat on the sixth floor on June 14, running out at around 1:30am in ‘hysterical mode, panicking, crying’. Kerry, however, who suffers from anxiety and depression, was so terribly panicked that she left her beloved cat Rosey behind.
‘I made a plan to put Rosey in her cat carrier and cover it with a wet towel, but that went out of the window – I was too panicked and scared,’ she explained to the paper.
As she dashed out of the flat into the thick black smoke, she glanced back for just one last look at her home of 18 years, and saw Rosey on the sofa looking back at her. In the weeks following the fire, Kerry tirelessly searched for Rosey, asking people near the police cordon if they had seen a black and white cat. She had gone ahead and put posters up all over the area, hoping that someone would have seen her kitty. Then two months later, just as she was about to give up hope, a resident of nearby Oxford Gardens found a scared and emaciated cat.
They ended up taking it to the vet, where they found this address on the microchip: Flat 34, Grenfell Tower.
‘I got a phone call from someone saying we think we’ve found your cat,’ Kerry said. ‘I was asking, is she OK, is she burnt? But she just had a scratch on her nose.’
And when they were finally reunited, it was as if they’d never been apart.
‘She recognized me straight away. Now I don’t let her out of my sight.’
Just goes to show you, one should never give up hope!
