Kim says: I’d actually never intended to own a cat, but saw her crawling along the side of the road and shrieking in the rain and picked her up without thinking. Then got back to my apartment and panicked; I had no idea what to do with a kitten. Luckily she ate some solid food and didn’t seem to be injured (although fairly traumatised). I bought some expensive flea remedy at the vet and knocked up a Web site hoping to find someone to adopt her with cute photos. I found a potential adopter within a couple of weeks, but by then of course it was too late -- I couldn’t let her go! Fortunately my stay in Shanghai, which had been scheduled to end a few weeks after I found her, has been extended indefinitely. Utopia and I will be here together for the foreseeable future.

Since then the Web site has gone viral and I get fairly regular e-mails about her. Most people seem to assume she was abandoned by someone, but I expect she never had a home and somehow became separated from her mother (not that there were any obvious candidates in sight). There are lots of strays in Shanghai; you often see them being fed by elderly Chinese women.

These days Utopia busies herself with making sure all my possessions are on the floor where they can be comfortably chewed.