In May 2023, Kitty Johnson made her first hedgehog rescue. The writer and creative writing teacher took a call from a family who had found one of the tiny mammals unresponsive in the middle of the park that borders her Norwich home. She rushed out of the door with a pair of latex gloves and a box filled with newspaper and began searching in the grass. “It took a while to find it but when I did, I picked the hedgehog up very carefully, placed it into the box and rushed it to my car,” she says. “From there, I drove it to a local sanctuary. It survived, and I was elated to play a part in saving its life.”
Growing up in Hertfordshire, Johnson was fascinated by nature as a child and would often go on long walks with her mother, who pointed out the names of wild flowers and trees. After moving to Norwich and beginning her writing career, she indulged her love of animals by adopting cats and several dogs. Yet her introduction to the world of hedgehogs came through her own role as a mother.
