Bada

Chocolate Silver Shaded Burmilla

30 August 2003 – 6 October 2008

We met Bada when she was 6 weeks old. She was fearless, and spiky of both fur and claw, and we were instantly in her thrall. She stole Pete’s heart, particularly, that day and never gave it back .. she has it still.  He held her as she died, and I was a little envious, but it was right, because there was something special between them.

We collected her six weeks later, at the beginning of November. She came from the same road, though not the same breeder, as Lilith, who was a week older. We had the pair to be company for each other, but they didn’t get on well, as they got older.

Bada was the most *joyous* kitten we have even encountered. She was a tiny cat, but utterly fearless; she would spend hours stalking bits of dangerous plastic coated wire, and every night when we went to bed, we
would all play the sproinging game, where we moved fingers and toes under the duvet, and she pounced on them with great ferocity, and bit us with her little sharp white pointy teeth. She used these same teeth to rend little bits of cardboard from boxes, preferably on high shelves, and then spit out the pieces, leaving a sort of brown cardboard dandruff in her wake.

The first night she spent with us, she crawled under the duvet with us – I guess she was cold and lonely. She spent many nights under there when the weather was cold – it was nice to wake up and find her small fursome body curled up next to you.

She didn’t speak much, but she had a particular voice which meant “bend down and let me dab your nose with my paw”. This was incredibly endearing – she didn’t do it often, but we always felt it a great honour to be so dabbed. When she was younger, she used just a soft paw; in later years, it was more of a maul, to be honest, but we didn’t mind.

She liked her water from a glass – I take a pint of fizzy water to bed with me, and she would inspect it during the night until it was flat enough for her to drink, and then she would go lappity lap.

Bada had beautiful eyes, looking as though they were rimmed with kohl, and she could adopt a frighteningly doe-eyed expression. We did in fact dub her “The People’s Kittin”, and we worried that she might be a reincarnation of the sainted Diana. She was so beautiful that Judith the Vet would take her into the waiting room and introduce her as the “most beautiful cat in Bristol”.   She was half right – I’d have expanded the geographical area, myself.

As she grew older, though not much bigger, she looked like nothing so much as a miniature mountain lion, and her diminutive size didn’t seem to stop her doing anything much. She was very jealous of any other cat round Pete, and would give poor Mustrum a sharp smack on the nose if he got in her way. She was beautiful, and feisty, but she wasn’t very nice, if truth be told.

Bada loved to be warm; a little heat-theeking missile. She would sit on the cooker if the oven was on, follow the sun round the living room so she could bask, even curl herself round the teacosy if there were a warm pot underneath. I bought her a special microwave pad, but she never liked it, for some reason – probably because it was /meant/ to keep her warm.

She spoke with a lithp, we always felt, and she said “thank you” a lot, although I suspect it was in a post-modern, ironic sort of way. And she was the only cat I have ever met who had a nibblous tail.

I cannot quite believe she is no longer with us – I look for her round the house all the time, wait for her to land on the bed at night with her little squeak, and push Pete’s book out of the way, sit on my desk in the
morning sunlight.

Good hunting, Bada – we miss you.