TIGER, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?- William Blake RIP Princess Tiger Lilly, Oct 2007 - Jul 2009. The cat with a boyish charm and gaiety that dissolved my suspicion for cats as cold creatures. I’ve always likened Tiger to a rambunctious teenage boy: slightly cocky, always curious, and never failed to play the part of a mummy’s boy who loved to be spoiled. He was the ‘king of the lot’: bigger in size, in appetite, in playfulness. Oft, he was wont to stir my morning slumber with his heavy paws on my bosom. Or tiptoed to another cat’s bowl to chomp down a second serving of breakfast. Or play with Frank, the other male cat who is the antithesis of Tiger’s machismo, and win by sheer size, weight and strength. I will never be able to get close to him, as I would with the other cats; like teenage boys distant and cold with their adolescent secrets. And like teenage boys, he would always come back for warmth and comfort, for beyond the veneer of an iron-clad feline manliness, lies the soft purrs of a boyish kitten who yearned to grow up too fast in his concrete terrain.

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake

RIP Princess Tiger Lilly, Oct 2007 - Jul 2009.


The cat with a boyish charm and gaiety that dissolved my suspicion for cats as cold creatures. I’ve always likened Tiger to a rambunctious teenage boy: slightly cocky, always curious, and never failed to play the part of a mummy’s boy who loved to be spoiled. He was the ‘king of the lot’: bigger in size, in appetite, in playfulness. Oft, he was wont to stir my morning slumber with his heavy paws on my bosom. Or tiptoed to another cat’s bowl to chomp down a second serving of breakfast. Or play with Frank, the other male cat who is the antithesis of Tiger’s machismo, and win by sheer size, weight and strength.

I will never be able to get close to him, as I would with the other cats; like teenage boys distant and cold with their adolescent secrets. And like teenage boys, he would always come back for warmth and comfort, for beyond the veneer of an iron-clad feline manliness, lies the soft purrs of a boyish kitten who yearned to grow up too fast in his concrete terrain.