When the Millipede Came to See the Kittens | by Thanzeena | Oct, 2025

A few days ago, a neighbourhood cat brought four tiny white kittens to our house and kept them under our bed.

She made herself at home, resting, feeding and moving in and out like she belonged here.

We didn’t mind.

Then, one morning, I noticed something unusual.

A millipede was crawling on the ceiling. It was unusual.. millipedes don’t usually appear inside, and definitely not on the ceiling.

It moved slowly, straight above the place where the kittens were sleeping.

It stopped there for a while, as if watching them.

And that’s when a story formed in my mind.

Once upon a time, this mother cat and the millipede were roommates.

They lived together quietly under another roof.

The cat was an explorer, always wandering, sometimes gone for days.

But the millipede stayed close, watching over their small world.

One day, four kittens were born soft and white.

The millipede felt joy, even though he never went near them. He just liked knowing they were there.

But soon, one by one, the kittens disappeared.

And finally, the cat stopped returning too.

The roof became silent again.

The millipede waited, but they never came back.

So he decided to go find them.

For a millipede, the world is big and full of danger. But love made him brave.

He travelled across the walls and through the nights until he reached a white house. (My house)

He climbed carefully, making sure no one noticed him. Finally, he reached the ceiling above the kittens, the same spot where I found him that morning.

He stayed there quietly, as if saying, “I found you.” Then he turned around and went back the way he came.

When I shared this story with my kids, they also noticed the millipede’s route.

But when it didn’t go close to the kittens, they said, “It didn’t come to see them then.”

I told them maybe love doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. Maybe the millipede and the kittens did meet, just not in a way we could see. Maybe they exchanged warmth or communicated in silence, in their own language.

But as humans, we expect love to look like our way of loving.. touch, closeness, attention.

And then I thought, isn’t that what we do in our relationships too? We often expect others to love us in the way we want to be loved, but they have their own ways of expressing it. We just need to understand each other’s way of loving, not force it to look like ours.

And yes.. the pictures below are all the characters from this drama, including the silent hero on the ceiling.