Hattie and I were born in the same litter, back in 1995. My mum doesn’t know much about our early lives, but she thinks we must have been seriously cute little fluffy ginger kittens. We looked quite similar, except that I am a bit bigger. Hattie had a ginger splash on her nose, and I have a ginger beauty-spot on my cheek. We lived in a household with 4 other cats, not related to us, and an old lady who let us eat off the table and gave me lots of tit-bits, which is how I got to be Fat. When our old lady died in October 2003, all us cats were taken to the cat sanctuary. We wondered what would happen to us. They promised to find us new homes, but they didn’t think anyone would take all 6 of us together, so we were split up into pairs, and Hattie and I were kept together. The girls in the sanctuary were very nice to us (I used to lick their hair a lot) but it was kind of noisy with all those cats mewing, and a bit scary. One day, my mum and dad came looking for a cat. They said, “We’re not looking for a kitten, we’re looking for a fat, lazy cat.” “Come right this way,” said the girls. My mum and dad saw two big fluffy orange balls sleeping on a shelf. I was so busy snoring, I didn’t even wake up to meet my mum, but Hattie woke up and she purred at my mum and did fluffy headbutts and gave her such good kitty loving that she got both of us adopted! Lucky for me I had such a clever sister. A few days later we were both wide awake and we saw my mum and dad coming back with two cat carriers, the next thing we were in a car going to our forever home, we were so excited! It didn’t take us long to settle in, by the end of a week we were acting like we had been living there all our lives. That was when we got our new names. Our old names were Max and Molly, but our mum and dad decided to call us Eric and Hattie (they’re the characters in a really really old British comedy show).

Hattie and I got on really well together, although we both liked to do our own thing so we weren’t often to be found in the same place. Hattie liked to sit on windowsills – every morning after breakfast she would jump on the front windowsill so that she could wave goodbye to our mum and dad when they went off to work. When they got home she would be in the window again watching for them! (I don’t do this because my bottom is too broad to fit comfortably on windowsills). She was really good at climbing and jumping up to sit in high places. She loved to snuggle with my dad. Sometimes she would sit on my mum and I would jump up and push her off because I am a total lap-hog! My mum knew that Hattie was really the boss cat in our house, though, because I always let her push me away from the food bowls, even though I love food! She would eat first and then let me eat. I used to wash her a lot, I licked her head all over and kept her ears very clean – I wash my mum and dad a lot now instead.

At Christmas 2003 we got taken to stay with Devon Grandma and Grandpa. I mewed all the way and did something unspeakable in my cat carrier, but Hattie was as good as gold on journeys. We quickly made ourselves at home in Devon and got lots of fuss all Christmas.

We only had four months of great times with my mum and dad before Hattie started to get ill. I’ll tell you the rest of Hattie’s story tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are some of our favourite Hattie pictures.

This is Hattie testing my mum’s laptop for comfort.