it started with Puan Tom..

We were building our current house back in late 2002 when we first saw this small female kitten playing underneath the construction materials lying infront of the front-gate. White mixed with black kitten playing alone.

As the construction continued and progressed slowly and haltingly over three years and three contractors.. we kept seeing this cat every once in a while, and more often towards the completion of the house. I started saying hello to her and casually named her Tom after Tom Abang Saufi, one of our local fashion designers. Why?? I'm also clueless but at that time i had a small gift-shop in the same building as Tom the designer. There!! ;))

A few weeks before we can finally move into the house in dec2005, the cat was getting friendlier and would seek me out whenever i came to visit. Her tummy was also getting rounder and rounder and straight-away i assumed she was pregnant. When she started 'talking' and meow-ing to me all the time as she followed me up @ down the unfinished house, i straight-away (as any seasoned cat-lovers would) understood her request for permission to 'beranak' at any secluded and safe spots in the house. And i told Tom "yes, go ahead my fellow mum.."

When we finally get comfortable in our new house, we could see Tom's tummy had flattened and she was regularly going up our rooftop. We never saw her kittens until she decided that it was time to introduce them to us by getting one by one of them down the roof. There were three of them, all females. By the time they came down to meet their human landlords, the kittens were already a few months old and therefore needed some time to get acquainted with us, humanoids..

Melissa, then 9yrs old, was the one most excited compared to her big sis Zulaika who couldn't care much. Baby brother Ikmal was only 2yrs old and was always shrieking around the house frightening the kittens all the time. Therefore Melissa had full control of what names to give to each kitten and she decided on these: Pebbles, Pickles and Pumpkin..

And as all of their names started with the letter 'P'.. we uninamously decided that the name of the cat-mum Tom should start with 'P' as well.. hence 'Puan Tom'............