Accept the Blank Page, Then Date Everything
A cat who arrives with no paperwork has a history; it simply was never written down. Your job is not to invent that history but to start an honest file where established facts, reported memories, and unknowns are clearly labelled as different things. From your first day, date every entry. In a file built from zero, the date is often the most trustworthy fact in it, and a vet reading it later needs to know what was seen by a professional and what was told to you at a doorstep.
Write down everything the previous owner said, in their words where you can: approximate age, how long they had her, indoor or outdoor life, food she ate, any vet they remember using, and behaviour in their home. Mark it reported, with the date you heard it. Reported history is genuinely useful to a vet, provided nobody later mistakes it for verified history.
Let the First Vet Visit Anchor the File
Book a general health check promptly and say plainly that there is no paperwork. The vet can scan for a microchip, which sometimes reunites a supposedly paperless cat with an old registered record worth following up, and can record weight, teeth, coat, and an estimated age range as a professional baseline. Vaccination status should be treated as unknown unless a record surfaces, and the vet will advise a sensible restart plan. Keep that first visit's summary as page one of the new file; everything later hangs off it.
Ask the practice to note on her record that prior history is unknown. That single line protects her, because future vets will not assume silence means a clean past.
Build the Care Notes From Observation
Your own notes become her care record surprisingly fast. In the first month, log what she eats and how eagerly, litter habits, sleep spots, how she responds to handling, visitors, and other animals, and anything that frightens her. Note the brand-free basics: type of food, feeding times, and the litter she accepts. If she came with a blanket or toy, keep it and note it; familiar scent objects are part of her care information, not clutter.
Chasing Ghost Paperwork Without Stalling
It is worth one round of polite detective work before you declare the past unrecoverable. Ask the previous owner which town they lived in and call the practices there to ask whether a cat matching her description and chip number, once you have it, appears on their books. Old practices, rescues, and even a breeder's prefix on a name she answers to can occasionally surface a vaccination date or a birth year that firms up your file. Time-box the search, though: two or three calls and a week of waiting is proportionate, and her care must never pause while you chase history. Anything that surfaces gets filed as reported evidence with its source named, never merged silently into the verified part of her record.
Keep the File Ready to Travel
A cat rehomed once may move again, and the kindest thing you can hand a future keeper is the file you wish you had received. Store vet summaries, chip details once registered to you, and your dated notes together, and update the chip registration into your name as soon as ownership is settled. Moving her into KinsLe's Transferrable Profiles means that when her profile ever passes to a new owner, the history you rebuilt travels with her intact instead of vanishing again.