“Have you got any orange kittens?”
We are asked this most days. Sometimes several times a day.
And most days, the honest answer is no, but we do have something better: a pen full of friendly, playful, funny little cats who happen to be black, or black and white, and who will wait weeks or months longer than their ginger and tabby siblings for someone to choose them.
At the time of writing, we have 24 black kittens and 32 black and white kittens in our care.
Not one of them knows there is anything unusual about the way they look.
The bad luck story is not even ours
Most people, if pushed, will trot out the same explanation: black cats are unlucky. A black cat crossing your path means something bad is coming.
Here is the thing. That is not a British belief. It is an import.
The idea of the black cat as a sinister creature took hold in medieval Europe, when cats were tangled up in witchcraft panics and treated as companions to witches rather than as the ordinary rat-catchers they were.
That version of the story travelled across the Atlantic with settlers and hardened there, then came back to us through decades of films, cartoons and Halloween decorations.
What Britain actually believed for centuries was almost the exact opposite.
What we used to think about black cats
In the English Midlands, a black cat was considered the ideal wedding gift, given to a bride to bring her happiness and good fortune in her marriage.
British sailors would not put to sea without one. A black cat aboard ship meant a safe voyage and a safe return home, and their wives often kept a black cat at home for the same reason, as a kind of charm to bring their husbands back. Practical, too: a good mouser protected the ship’s rations.
In Scotland, a strange black cat turning up at your door was not an omen to dread. It meant prosperity was on its way.
Across large parts of England, a black cat crossing your path was a sign that good things were coming. The luck was the whole point.
Somewhere along the way we forgot all of that, and a nation that once handed black cats to brides now walks past them in rescue centres.
The plight of the monochrome cat
Sandbach is not unusual here. This is happening in every rescue in the country.
Research published by Agria Pet Insurance in 2025 found that around two thirds of UK rescue centres say black cats are the hardest colour to rehome. For 40% of those centres, a black cat typically takes more than 90 days longer to find a home than a cat of another colour. Appearance and colour were cited more often as a barrier to adoption than illness, disability or behavioural problems.
Cats Protection has found that black cats in their care take around 13% longer to be adopted. The RSPCA reports that black and black and white cats are nearly three times more likely to come into their care than tabbies, and take roughly three times longer to be rehomed once they arrive.
Superstition explains some of it. But rescues increasingly point at something much more modern and much more mundane: the camera.
Black cats are harder to photograph. Their features disappear in a badly lit snap, and in a world where cats are met online before they are met in person, a kitten who does not photograph well is a kitten who gets scrolled past.
We see it ourselves. A tabby kitten posted on our Facebook page can generate a flurry of enquiries in a day. A black kitten posted the same morning might get one.
It is worth sitting with that for a second. A cat’s chances of finding a family are being shaped by how it looks on a phone screen.
What you actually get
Colour tells you very little about a cat. It certainly does not tell you whether a kitten will curl up on your lap the moment you sit down, or follow you from room to room, or greet you at the door, or sit on your keyboard while you are trying to work.
Our black and black and white kittens are doing all of those things right now, in foster homes across Cheshire, with people who will tell you they are as daft, affectionate and full of character as any cat we have ever had through our doors.
And there is a practical case too. Because black and black and white cats are so often overlooked, they are the ones most likely to still be here when the next litters arrive.
Choosing one does not just change that cat’s life. It frees up a space, and a foster carer, and a set of hands, for the next cat who needs us.
Change the story
We are a small rescue in Sandbach, run entirely by volunteers. What we have is a lot of lovely cats and a very old myth working against them.
So if you have been thinking about adopting, please come and meet the ones nobody is asking for. Look past the colour and look at the cat.
Ready to adopt? Take a look at the cats and kittens currently waiting for homes.
Not in a position to adopt?
Sharing this article genuinely helps. Every share puts our monochrome kittens in front of someone who might not have thought of them.
Want to help us care for them?
Every cat in our care is fed, vaccinated, microchipped and neutered before they go anywhere, and all of it is funded by donations from people like you.
Whatever you are able to give helps us keep those pens open and those kittens cared for until the right family comes along. Please donate here.
Because a black cat was never bad luck.
It was a wedding gift, a lucky charm and a safe voyage home. It might still be the best thing that happens to your household this year.