Story of a Tig
May. 7th, 2007 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
themis1This is in memory of the Tig, and for those who knew her, it needs a hankie warning.
On 12th August 1989, because Tallulah, a stray tabby who’d adopted me, had got run over and I was pining, Hilary went into Streatham. “I need a tabby kitten!” she informed the pet shop. They had one. She was the tiniest, cutest tabby-and-white kitten you ever could want. With kitten in box, Hilary left the shop – and discovered that she might be small, but she had a BIG, BIG, BIG voice and DIDN’T LIKE BEING IN A BOX!
Thus did Tanith, aka TIG!!! (it’s what she kept saying), enter our lives. She *hated* kitten food, spent her first night with us throwing up (so Hilary slept on the sofa in a sleeping bag with Tig on her stomach) and had a tail LIKE A WET PIECE OF STRING. (She hated this description so much we think she did tail exercises, as it ended up being the most powerful part of her anatomy).
Melanie, our oldest cat, adopted the Tig as her own, and whilst Lillian, the middle cat at that time, wasn’t particularly interested in playing with her, she didn’t mind her and often curled up with her. Then Melanie died, and the Tig had nobody to play with, so we had to get another kitten (Phoebe) to keep her company. After a couple of days of hiss-and-spit they decided they were bestest friends, and remained so for several years, then had a falling out (who knows with cats? Maybe they both fancied the same Tom!) and never really reconciled.
Tig was always lively – she would spend hours chasing the duvet monster, long pieces of grass, and went through a phase of bringing back balls of paper (or screwed up yoghurt lids) if we threw them for her. She would bristle and hiss at the London pigeons, most of which were larger than she was.
Tig would spend evenings on my bed (the TV was in my bedroom, so we all spent evenings in there!) curled up under my left hand; her purr was so quiet that you could feel it rather than hear it. She enjoyed checking out what we’d had for dinner, and particularly liked anything that was tomato-flavoured.
There was one thing that truly terrified the Tig – the vacuum cleaner. She had only to hear it switched on somewhere in the house, and she’d flee for cover, often behind the washing machine. This led to us having lengthy conversations with the machine trying to talk her out (occasionally discovering with embarrassment that she wasn’t behind it after all!).
When we moved to Bicester, Tig got used to the house fairly rapidly and, like the other cats, peered curiously out of the various windows. The first time Hilary took her into the garden, however, she ran around in circles howling pitifully – it seemed she hadn’t associated the house being different with there being a different outside world, too, and she wanted to know where her garden had gone! She soon settled in, however, and because she was getting old and was thirsty a lot of the time, she would follow me round the garden when I was watering and lick the droplets of water off and out of everything I passed. She even enjoyed licking the patio! She took over the lounge, and would sit on the windowsill and watch for my car of an evening, and come into the hall to greet me.
She never really grew up – she remained tiny, and lively, so much so that a friend of ours, on seeing her a year or so ago, said, “I thought you said you hadn’t got any kittens?”
She was Special Tig Of The House. She was Lap Tig Couchant.
Tig died on 26th January 2007 aged 17 ½. I loved her very much and I miss her.
On 12th August 1989, because Tallulah, a stray tabby who’d adopted me, had got run over and I was pining, Hilary went into Streatham. “I need a tabby kitten!” she informed the pet shop. They had one. She was the tiniest, cutest tabby-and-white kitten you ever could want. With kitten in box, Hilary left the shop – and discovered that she might be small, but she had a BIG, BIG, BIG voice and DIDN’T LIKE BEING IN A BOX!
Thus did Tanith, aka TIG!!! (it’s what she kept saying), enter our lives. She *hated* kitten food, spent her first night with us throwing up (so Hilary slept on the sofa in a sleeping bag with Tig on her stomach) and had a tail LIKE A WET PIECE OF STRING. (She hated this description so much we think she did tail exercises, as it ended up being the most powerful part of her anatomy).
Melanie, our oldest cat, adopted the Tig as her own, and whilst Lillian, the middle cat at that time, wasn’t particularly interested in playing with her, she didn’t mind her and often curled up with her. Then Melanie died, and the Tig had nobody to play with, so we had to get another kitten (Phoebe) to keep her company. After a couple of days of hiss-and-spit they decided they were bestest friends, and remained so for several years, then had a falling out (who knows with cats? Maybe they both fancied the same Tom!) and never really reconciled.
Tig was always lively – she would spend hours chasing the duvet monster, long pieces of grass, and went through a phase of bringing back balls of paper (or screwed up yoghurt lids) if we threw them for her. She would bristle and hiss at the London pigeons, most of which were larger than she was.
Tig would spend evenings on my bed (the TV was in my bedroom, so we all spent evenings in there!) curled up under my left hand; her purr was so quiet that you could feel it rather than hear it. She enjoyed checking out what we’d had for dinner, and particularly liked anything that was tomato-flavoured.
There was one thing that truly terrified the Tig – the vacuum cleaner. She had only to hear it switched on somewhere in the house, and she’d flee for cover, often behind the washing machine. This led to us having lengthy conversations with the machine trying to talk her out (occasionally discovering with embarrassment that she wasn’t behind it after all!).
When we moved to Bicester, Tig got used to the house fairly rapidly and, like the other cats, peered curiously out of the various windows. The first time Hilary took her into the garden, however, she ran around in circles howling pitifully – it seemed she hadn’t associated the house being different with there being a different outside world, too, and she wanted to know where her garden had gone! She soon settled in, however, and because she was getting old and was thirsty a lot of the time, she would follow me round the garden when I was watering and lick the droplets of water off and out of everything I passed. She even enjoyed licking the patio! She took over the lounge, and would sit on the windowsill and watch for my car of an evening, and come into the hall to greet me.
She never really grew up – she remained tiny, and lively, so much so that a friend of ours, on seeing her a year or so ago, said, “I thought you said you hadn’t got any kittens?”
She was Special Tig Of The House. She was Lap Tig Couchant.
Tig died on 26th January 2007 aged 17 ½. I loved her very much and I miss her.
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Date: 2007-05-07 07:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-07 10:26 pm (UTC)