Kitkat joins our family

by Bob Cumming · Published 04/10/2026 · Updated 04/10/2026

Kitkat joined us on 1 July 2026. She’s a great fit, although very different from Peppa.

Replacing Peppa was catalysed by our neighbour Tanya with this What’s App post.

We thought about it, and responded positively.

Then we rethought about it.

There is an interesting phenomenon where some people with cognitive decline conditions have difficulty with black – black comes to be seen as an absence rather than a thing (with a colour).

I learned about this from the wonderful book ‘What I Wish People Knew About Dementia’ by Wendy Mitchell, a British woman who authored three books after getting early-onset Alzheimers Disease at age 59. She reported that stepping into a hotel lobby of black marble was like being asked to step off the edge of the earth into nothingness.

I read about this in 2022 or 2023 and it has been profoundly useful for us:

When Antigone got her first iphone, we chose a SE version with a home button thinking that would be easier for her. She was unable to see and press the black button and its colour could not be changed because it was also a fingerprint reader. So we returned the phone and got one without a button.
We realised why our friend Marie (who had Parkinsons Disease) had never been able to learn to correctly use our back door latch despite having lived with us for months and visited hundreds of times. To avoid this becoming difficult for others, I have added white paint to the ‘open’ lever on the latch.
When Antigone had difficulty holding the tongues on her black shoes, I painted the tongues red.
I also painted the black brake levers on her walker – yellow.
Last week, she was sitting with me while I worked on our caravan. She had difficulty placing her drink on a camp table because it was black. So I painted our two camp tables red and orange.

Anyway, back to the subject of cats, I thought it would be unfortunate to have a cat that might be seen as an absence because it was black. Black seemed a poor choice for us. So we reneged on our initial positive response about Nella.

It turns out that Tanya’s cousin Lee was also open to rehoming another of her five cats – Kitkat. Kitkat is beautiful and not black. Lee dropped her off on 1 July. Kitkat made our house her home pretty quickly. She seemed to like to get high – like near the standing lamp.

Support worker Tahlia suggested buying Kitkat a scratching device from Kmart. I’d never bought one before. The selection was overwhelming. Since Kitkat likes to get high, I bought her a 6-tier tower, which was quite a process to assemble. Kitkat ignored it for weeks. Tahlia said I should have bought a specific cheaper scratching device. I did, and Kitkat embraced it.

I contemplated returning the tower to Kmart (though I would have had the major task of disassembling it). Support worker Catherine suggested moving the tower next to our dining room window. Kitkat started using it immediately. Perfect.

Kitkat is a windowsill cat who seemed to like the windowsill over our sink and drying rack – a place where we did not want a cat. As an alternative, I added a shelf midway up our dining room window, accessible from the cat tower in its new location.