Story of Holly

Holly has been our pet for almost 5 years now. But before we talk about Holly, we need to talk about Ginger. Ginger was the friendliest, clingiest, loudest ginger cat in Jayabheri Silicon County (my Hyderabad rented apartment). You would hear him before you saw him. He would always follow you around as soon as he saw you, and he would follow you inside your house if you didn't shoo him away. His mews were so noisy and scratchy that you'd feed him and pet him just to shut him up.  And we used that tactic quite often. Then one day he visited us with his family: Fluffy tail and Holly. Fluffy tail was a calico, Holly's mom, and in this scenario, Ginger's grumpier half — she would never let you pet her and hissed every time you tried to. You fed her and left her alone. But their kid Holly was just a kitten back then, also a calico, and we fell in love with her as soon as we saw her, and she knew it.

After the day of Ginger's family visit, Holly started hanging around our house more often. She used to hide in the bushes beneath the palm tree outside our window, sometimes leave a bird outside our house as a sign of gratitude and soon she started following us whenever we went for walks in the gardens around our apartment. After we gained her trust, she even used to follow us in our apartment and lie down on one of the sofas in the living room. Once she even sat in my lap while I was sitting on the sofa. Oh, and I totally forgot to tell you why we named her Holly. Well we were watching The Office series those days (still do, but we were watching it back then as well), and Holly was the new girl in the office that episode, and since the kitten was a female, Aishwarya decided to name her Holly.

After the pandemic started, we started to work from home more and more. Earlier days of the lockdown we couldn't even step outside our home, but Holly would be there every morning mewing outside our window waiting for us to feed her. She even found a way to jump across apartment balconies to land in our apartment without entering through the front door. Soon she was comfortable enough to sit on our desk while we worked or hangout inside amazon boxes that were left from our orders to make the stay inside comfortable. She made the days more fun.

In May of 2021 Holly got severely injured. She disappeared for a week, and she returned with a horrible wound on one of her hind legs. We quarantined her in our living room, fed her, turned one of the extra laundry bags into a cozy cave and kept a watch on her. Her wound started looking worse at the end of the second day of observation. Aishwarya was distraught. It was curfew and non-essential travel wasn't allowed. My flatmate Raunaq had a car, he figured out a way to get a pass for travel and drove Aishwarya & Holly to the vet. They came back with good news, we will have to monitor Holly and give her meds, but she would be fine in a few weeks.

Holly was getting better by June. Then one fine day she starts mewing and crouches beside Aishwarya. She seems in some kind of distress, but we don't realise what could be causing it. While we did discuss what to do, she goes to her litter tray and delivers 3 kittens. Pandemic gets much more exciting 😄

Holly let us pick up her kittens from day 1. Her trust in us was absolute. The kittens looked like tiny rats in the beginning, but in a couple of weeks they were so freaking cute. Funny and fluffy! They became the centre of our existence. They used to play together, climb on the extra mattress we put up in our living room, would just follow anything and anyone around the house. It looked so funny when they played with a tennis ball, cause they were as tall as the ball and if they hopped on it they would roll along with the ball 😄. They were so tiny that they would sit in their food bowl as they ate their food. We named the kittens Dwight, Henry and Jamie. Dwight was a bully & a food hogger. Henry was the calmest of them all, and used to mind his own business. Jamie was just super playful and just as fluffy as Holly.

The kitten era lasted 3 months. The era's end started with a Mexican standoff between the 3 kittens, and when I picked up Jamie to end it, she went complete Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil and scratched my hand badly. Still I couldn't get mad at her, she was that cute. The same evening Jamie thought it would be a good idea to treat Holly similarly, but Holly didn't find it cute at all. She whooped Jamie, till Jamie was so scared that she ran all over the house for her dear life and was literally shit scared – she pooped everywhere. We were so scared by all the ruckus during their fight that we thought Holly was going to kill Jamie if she got to her. The next day we decided to give the kittens up for adoption. And they were so adorable that they were adopted within couple of days. I cried a little when we went to drop Jamie off to her new home. I had grown more attached to her than I thought. Holly stayed with us. She went to being her calm self after the kittens were gone. She seemed to have forgotten all about them by the end of the week.

At the beginning of 2022 we moved to London and we took Holly with us. Holly loved London. The cold weather here suited her, and she developed a fluffier coat. At our first apartment in London, we used to be visited by foxes, and cats from around the apartment, and it was so fun to watch her get spooked and circle the apartment to end up in one of the windows staring daggers and hissing at her enemies beyond the glass, thankfully out of her reach. In our current apartment foxes and cats are replaced by pigeons and magpies as we are on the third floor. Holly's reaction changed from staring and hissing to mimicking bird noises which is equally funny to watch. By the end of August this year we will be moving back to India to our hometown Vadodara, and Holly will be moving to our hometown with us.