Having a Cute Black Cat Kitten: 3 Interesting Things that we Learned

Back in 2017, unexpectedly a black cat kitten came into our lives and he changed everything!

My Fiancee and I live on the sunny island of Gran Canaria which is part of the Canary Islands.

These islands are known for the vast numbers of street cats and many of them are black. One black kitten in particular is the inspiration for this entire website and we named him ‘Coco’.

How we Met

In our street you will always find street cats sleeping under cars and coming to you for food, water, and love as you open your front door.

A beautiful Siamese cat spent a lot of time outside our home and we made sure that she had food and water every day.

She would often come into our home and just chill with us while we were working away on our computers.

She was well known to the locals here for having a lot of kittens and many of them were black.

There’s a vacant house on the corner of our street that is stone, very old and is basically ancient ruins. Many cats in this area, use this house to look after their kittens.

This was the case when the Siamese had two tiny balls of black fur. I remember Yurena telling me to come to the house and look through what was once a window.

Sooooo cute! I could see two sets of tiny black furry front legs…

Fast forward a couple of weeks and as we were feeding the Siamese one day, she began meowing, calling her kitten over to our house to eat from the bowls inside our front door.

This was the day that we met Coco.

How Coco Moved In

As Coco became braver and more independent, he started to play with me and I gained his trust.

Once he trusted me and knew that he had a regular food source, he wouldn’t leave the area outside of our front door.

At that time I used to park my car on the road directly outside of our house and Coco made this his temporary home.

Any time I’d open the front door and do my catcall, he’d wake up and come running into the house.

I’d give him cuddles and some food and water.

Around this time, his Mom had decided to reject him, allowing him to make his own way in life.

Coco would often try to suckle from his Mom, but she wasn’t interested and would hiss at him until he left her alone.

As time went on, Coco was starting to spend more time in our house than outside.

One day Coco was sleeping on my lap while we were watching Netflix and I said to Yurena “shall we keep him” Yurena all full of emotion said “yes”.

The following day we bought a litter tray, cat trees, toys, etc… and that was the last day that Coco was known as a ‘street cat’.

3 Things that we learnt from having a black cat kitten

He wasn’t black

As you may already know black cat’s fur isn’t actually black, it’s dark brown.

As I mentioned earlier the Canary Islands are drenched in sun all-year-round and the sun really faded Coco’s fur.

It’s very common for black cats who spend a lot of time in the sun to have a rusty appearance.

When we were trying to come up with a name for Coco, I was looking at his fur and it reminded me of the color of a coconut shell.

That was it!

We named him Coco…

We quickly became his new parents

Once I had Coco’s trust he became very clingy and it even got to the point where he was really defensive of his territory.

He went from craving his Mom’s attention to chasing her away one day.

Coco’s Mom came close to our front door around the time that we were about to take him in and out of nowhere, Coco pounced onto her back and chased her away.

She ran off up the street!

Coco now has to be everywhere we are and he even sleeps on our bed with us, all night!

Coco has stripes

When Coco first came into our lives, we noticed that he has stripes on his back legs.

They are only visible in the sunlight.

When researching for a blog post on black cat genetics I realized that the thing that makes a black cat black is genetic.

Coco has the genes of a cat that has a stripy pattern but this gene is being suppressed by the black cat gene.

Coco is more than likely a Tabby Cat in disguise.

A lot of black cats have a ghost-like pattern hidden away…

My Final Thoughts

Having a black cat kitten was a wonderful experience and to be honest, it was something that I never imagined happening to me.

I’ve always loved animals but considered myself to be a dog person. That’s not the case…

Maybe one day we will have a dog or dogs too but I’d definitely consider myself to be a cat person now.

Coco is an adult cat but in our eyes, he’ll always be our black cat kitten…

For more black cat content check out the My Mini Panther Facebook page.