letter to tilli

Dear Tilli,

It’s hard for us to say how long you’ve been home with us now, as there were so many hiccups at the start, but I can tell you it feels as though you’ve been part of our lives for much much longer. It’s pretty clear that Mr You thinks you are the BEST birthday present he has ever been given!

We still remember the first day we saw you, sitting high up on a shelf on your own, away from all the little kittens inside your enclosure below. Back then they called you Tilliana, and you wore a diamond encrusted pink leather collar. Both Mr You and I commented on you right away, saying how pretty you looked. (You’ve grown so much since then).

What followed were weeks of bad fortune for both you (as you suffered a terrible eye infection, then a flu) and for us waiting to know if we could have you, then worrying for your health, and not being able to have you at home with us.

We eventually got to bring you home for good, and you settled in right away. You spent the first few days in one part of the house as you got used to the layout, then as we introduced you to the other rooms and the hallway your spirits seemed to rise even further. The hallway is your dream come true as you bolt from one end of the house to the next

You also love playing under the bed, under the wardrobe and under the lounge. You adore playing with your ball, so much so that you have discovered new superballs around the house that we completely forgot that we had. You love your scratching post and also the play box I made for you. We always knew you were a sweetheart, but I never anticipated how playful you would turn out to be. You and I have the best fun together playing peek-a-boo and hide and seek! You’re very clever when you play these games, it’s great fun and I laugh so much, I thank-you for introducing playtime back into my day.



You also like to sleep. Your favourite spots are on the brown cushion on the lounge, and also on the office chair in the sunny doorway, gazing into the back garden. (You haven’t been outside yet, but in a few weeks we intend to introduce you to the back garden. I suspect you will love it more than anywhere else). At night you sleep in your little room, in your little fleece lined nest bed. You didn’t take to it at first, but once we started putting a hot water bottle in the bottom of it, you LOVED it.

Each night we lay you in your bed, put your eye drops in and both pat you until you’re nice and relaxed and ready to go to sleep. We have other routines too, each morning after breakfast you sit in my lap and purr loudly as I brush your coat. You’ve gotten so used to it now that you even stretch out each of your legs one at a time so they can get a good brush too. Your lips quiver with satisfaction as I brush under your chin and down your chest.

You LOVE FOOD! It’s incredible really, you’re so desperate to get at it that for a while we were concerned that you were pregnant. Sadly, last week we took you in for your desexing operation, they cut you open and discovered that you had already been desexed. So now you are shaved bare in strange places, have a big nasty scar, and are once again in recovery. We felt so sorry for you, but at least we now know that you are not pregnant, you just LOVE food. Actually your love for food makes it easy for us to train you, as we use small snacks as motivation. The only time you make a noise is when you’re getting worked up about a mealtime. You don’t know how to meow yet, instead you make a funny little squeaking sound.

Because of this one of your nicknames is Squeakor. I say “one of” because you have many: Tilli-Milli, Till-Till, Tilli-bits, Tilli-biscuit, Possum, Bunny, Chook-Chook (because of the way you look like a roosting chicken when you lie with all your legs tucked up underneath you) and others. We also sing songs to you, actually Mr You does that more than I do.

I mentioned before that you are a sweetheart; you’re gentle and affectionate, and it melts my heart in the morning when Mr You lets you into the bedroom, you jump up onto the bed run right up to my face, give me a kiss, and bounce back off the bed to go and start playing. Your way of kissing is touching your little pink nose to the tip of our nose. It’s soooo cute. Sometimes if you’re feeling extra loving you’ll smooch your nose up and down ours, and sometimes you even reach out and rest your little hand on mine for a while.

You haven’t been too naughty yet, you’re just curious really. You haven’t climbed any curtains, or clawed any furniture; your main vice is food. You don’t try to get to our meals (you’re a good girl), but one morning after we ate scrambled eggs for breakfast we came back into the kitchen to find you, all four paws and tongue, knee deep in oily egg water in the frypan we had left soaking in the sink. You got in trouble for that, but we still love you. To this day we still find you searching for egg-water now and then.

There was also the incident with the pot plant. It’s a strange little plant that Mr You bought as a bit of a joke for me for my birthday last year. Anyway as you like to sit in the sunshine, and this particular pot plant was in a good sunny spot, you decided that you would prefer it if you could sit on the sunny pot instead of the plant. You didn’t get in trouble for that, as I thought it showed good problem solving skills, (and you haven’t bothered any other plants at all). Mr You said to me “My birthday present can beat your birthday present”, and we both laughed.

We laugh a lot actually, you’ve brought great joy into our lives, and so so much love. We love you enormously, and we think about you when we are away from you. Even when we went out for a nice meal last night to celebrate our anniversary, we couldn’t wait to get back home and see you.

I think it’s safe to say we are completely besotted.

All my love,
flossy-p-mammor


(hehehehehe – don’t worry I won’t be doing this each month, I just love the mamma-baby newsletters that people get to write and thought I’d try one too. I know, Tilli is a cat and the love I’m sure doesn’t compare to that which you have for your own baby. But it’s as close as I can get for the time being, and anyway, have you seen her? She’s seriously cute!)