Tigger & Biscuit

Tigger (left) and Biscuit (right) when we first brought them home

Tigger and Biscuit are our first pets. I've never had a pet in my life till then, 'cos my mother forbade it when I was growing up. Alex, on the other hand, grew up on a small farm in England, and since his parents loved cats, was surrounded by them from the time he was born.

Two years into our marriage, at a time when Alex was working a lot of overtime as well as working abroad frequently, I broached the idea of getting a dog so that the house would not seem so empty when I came home from work. Alex didn't think a dog was a good idea 'cos it would be lonely for most of the day. He suggested that we get a cat instead, and after much reading up, we decided on a pair of kittens so that they would have company while we were out of the house.

We went to the SPCA one Sunday with my sister Pat. Unfortunately the cats there were all down with cat flu and therefore not available for adoption. As we were leaving, Pat heard someone go "psstt!!" behind her. It was one of the SPCA staff, whose name, we later found out, was Agnes. She asked if we were looking to adopt a kitten and when we said yes, she disappeared behind a door and returned with a tiny but foul-smelling little ginger kitten. We fell in love with it immediately and told her so. Agnes then asked if we would take another one. As we had already planned to take a pair, we said yes. This time, she returned with a black and ginger bundle, who was just as foul smelling. Agnes said that she had just rescued a litter of kittens from a construction site and that there was no where to place them as the quarantine area was filled with sick cats from the cattery.

Alex and I took the pair home and discovered two things. One, they were crawling with fleas and two, they had a very bad case of diarrhoea. We took them to the vet and found out that their ears were infested with mites and that they were very weak due to anaemia. Their chances of survival were not good.

Over the next two weeks, it was as if we had newborn baby twins in the house. They needed their feed and medication every four hours, 24 hours a day. Our lives revolved around these four-hour feeds. We would take half day leave or rush home during lunch hour to feed Tigger and Biscuit using a syringe. And while I had my fair share of feeding time, Alex very kindly took the 3am shift every day, mostly because I was a heavy sleeper and would not have heard the alarm clock anyway.

The first night at our flat, Biscuit had already begun to wander around the bathroom. She even managed to climb over the child safety gate that we had installed at the bathroom door leading to the spare room. Meanwhile Tigger would just lay in their shared little box, not moving at all. Biscuit's wanderlust lulled us into thinking that she was the stronger of the two and we were thrilled that she appeared to be thriving. On the other hand, Tigger worried us a lot by his inactivity.

However, when we took them back to the vet for a check-up after a week, she told us that Biscuit was the weaker of the two and that she had lost weight. Upon reflection, we realised that while Tigger would swallow whatever we syringed into his mouth, Biscuit would let the liquid seep out from the opposite corner of her mouth. 10 days after we got her from the SPCA, Biscuit died while we were out for dinner.

Biscuit 2000

Her death truly saddened us. It should not have been unexpected but it was. I was very upset at the time but it has been a learning experience.

May Biscuit be happy and well wherever she is.