BCC EP:126 Kent Cat Fight, Surrey double take

Cat Fight is the new novel from author Kit Conway which centres around big cat encounters in Kent, published in the UK in May and the US in June 2025. We speak to Kit about how Big Cat Conversations helped shape her ideas for the big cat aspects of the plot. The book has already been optioned as a future TV screenplay, and Kit discusses how she weaved big cat sightings into a novel about the developing frictions across a close community in south-east England. It is a rollercoaster of a story which explores people’s switch to wild behaviour on different levels.

Our second guest Gary describes some big cat incidents in Surrey, just 50 miles west of where Cat Fight is set. He himself has twice observed a black panther in a neighbouring agricultural field, viewed from the same spot in his parents’ house. Believed by Gary to be a black leopard on each occasion, the sightings were 20 years apart in 2003 and 2023.   

Word of the week:   rosette

Cat Fight book availability in UK:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463613/cat-fight-by-conway-kit/9780857506597 

Cat Fight book availability in North America:  

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cat-Fight/Kit-Conway/9781668066348

Copies of Cat Fight are available for UK and for North America listeners to win by emailing ‘word of the week’ suggestions – details in the podcast.

Kit Conway, Cat Fight author’s website: https://www.kitconway.com/ 

1st June 2025