Then there were six, but now only one remains

She came when we just moved in. She was a small-built tri-coloured queen perhaps too young to start breeding. Oh yeah she was pregnant when she came.

We were too busy unpacking to really care about her presence. As far as I could remember she was as manja as any queen that I had encountered. She would laze around on our old sofa and whenever we sat there she would rub her slender body against our legs.

Barely a week after her appearance, one fine morning there there were, five of them all soaking wet with her mother's birth fluid on the sofa. The sofa was, understandably, wet.

We placed the kittens in an old box lined with old clothes that we brought along during our transfer. For a few days she and us were fighting over the right to care of the kittens - we placed them in the cosy box and she brought them out to some other places she thought safe.

Once she and her kittens just disappeared from sight. I was searching high and low for them but failed to find them. After playing dumb for sometimes and pretending that I did not notice her actions, finally I discovered her hideout - under Kamal's bed!

She, with an instinct of a well-brought up mother, had successfully concealed her babies in the warm old carpets.

Only after a week she stopped carrying her babies around. Perhaps after she realized that we did not want to harm her babies.

The kittens were multi-coloured - one was tri-coloured, two were orange and the remaining two were black and white. They grew well on their mother's milk as well as extra milk that we supplied.

Tragically, one day as I was reversing the car on my way to work, she suddenly ran across the car porch right underneath the car. My children shouted warning me of her, but it was too late. I accidentally ran over her.

She was badly hurt. Pushing her limp body forward, she ran towards her babies. They all came and surrounded her. Then she went limp and quiet. She died and I was the culprit!

Kamal quickly picked the lifeless body and buried it in the empty space in front of our house. Everybody was sad. Amalia and Diyana cried.

Lives for the five kittens after that were not the same, just like us humans. The orange ones suddenly went missing, just like that, with no trace at all. The tri-coloured one contracted a viral disease and died on us. The black kitten with kinky tail was killed by a wandering tomcat.

So, only one black kitten survived. It was a pity seeing him learning all the tricks of life by himself.

Now, he is a year old but he still behaves like a kitten! Often times he gets involved in a one-sided fight with the neighbour's tomcat.

Twice he went missing after such a fight and after two or three days he would reappeared in our house compound. It looks like he will be long with us.

We hope that he will one day soon become a full grown tomcat that will claim our house compound as his very own domain and chase intruders like that tomcat!