On June 14, Kerry O’Hara escaped from the fire that engulfed her home on the sixth floor of London’s Grenfell Tower.
Caught in the terror of the inferno, O’Hara, 53, was unable to take her cat, Rosey, with her.
“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 told The Guardian.”In the end, I just grabbed my keys and a jacket.”
She figured her final glimpse of Rosey through the smoke that poured into her home of 18 years, could be her last. In the weeks after the fire, O’Hara held out some hope, visiting the smoldering sight of her former apartment to ask if any rescuers or authorities had found a black-and-white cat. She put up missing posters around the area as well, but heard nothing.
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Two months later, there was finally a glimmer of good news: Someone came across a malnourished and skittish feline and took it to the vet for care. The address on black-and-white cat’s microchip showed that it lived at Grenfell Tower — in O’Hara’s former apartment.
“I got a phone call from someone saying we think we’ve found your cat,” O’Hara said of her miraculous reunion with Rosey. “I was asking, is she OK, is she burnt? But she just had a scratch on her nose. She recognized me straight away. Now I don’t let her out of my sight.”
Rosey is now living with her mom at the temporary housing provided for them by the Kensington and Chelsea council. While the accommodations hardly live up to the homey comfort of her destroyed flat, O’Hara feels a little more at home in the new apartment thanks to Rosey.
