The Adventures of Tilly: An Atypical But Not So Unexpected Morning

After suffering a night of miscellaneous back pain, I awoke this morning not to the sound of Tilly whining to be fed, nor to the scrambling of her feet as she clambers haphazardly over the duvet, but to silence. A year ago this would have been a good thing but these days such blissful peace is a worrying sign. There are two things that you should know about Tilly. Firstly, she was found abandoned in a shed within the first few weeks of her life, suffering from a form of feline muscular dystrophy. This unfortunate ailment primarily affects her back legs and has rendered her tail almost completely insensitive. As a result, she occasionally finds it difficult to traverse the wilds of our apartment and I think it is fair to say that she lacks even a modicum of the graceful elegance of movement that you'd normally expect from a cat. As if that wasn't enough, Till is also particularly prone to urinary problems and has recently been diagnosed with a heart murmur. Now, before this post descends any further into a cheap parody of a charity plea, the second thing that you should know about Tilly is that none of the above bothers her in the slightest. In fact, she is as tenacious and inquisitive as the next kitten. Given this none too insignificant fact, waking up in the morning outside of Till's normal routine only ever means trouble.

Anti-cat device

As it happens, it took all but the three or four steps that it takes to reach the kitchen before I located Tilly's whereabouts. She was, of course, where she shouldn't have been; that is to say, the kitchen surface. Once upon a time, this would have really annoyed me. After all, it took Mona literally one failed attempt and a stern "no" to learn that the kitchen surface was off limits. Nevertheless, I have since learnt that Till has no concept of boundaries and, in truth, I'm always a little impressed that she can get up there in the first place given her gammy legs (case in point). And so, although we still discourage her from the kitchen surface as much as possible, we have also taken the precaution of never leaving food out, both for her own health and our hygiene. However, this morning just so happened to be the morning after an evening of baking and if there is one thing that Tilly loves more than anything else it is cake. Of course, Kat placed the goods in a box for safe keeping but decided it would be a good idea to leave the one cake that wouldn't fit  on top with only a cake umbrella for protection.

The aftermath

Bearing in mind the fact that cake umbrellas are not in anyway designed to keep out small mammals, and are therefore easily pushed aside by anything other than the tiny insects of which they are intended to repel, I am still bemused that Tilly instead chose to tear her way through my unopened bag of bagels. Not that I can really blame her, they are delicious and I foolishly left them out. And yet this small display of determination and persistence is absolutely typical of Tilly's temperament at large. Despite all of her ailments and misfortunes, she doesn't shy away from a challenge, especially when it involves food. Her resilience, not to mention her complete lack of regard for her own well-being, is quite amazing. Like the time when she managed to find a way to the milk drop kitten treats and ate almost an entire packet before we found her; she had a poorly stomach for days afterwards, but I'm sure that if she was conscious of what she was doing, she would have thought it was well worth it. Fortunately this story has a less messy ending: the bagels were, for the most part, salvaged.