Basil is my boy cat and I have had him almost 2 years. He’s 3 years old.

Basil is far more popular than me on social media – @fluffybasil has over 9,500 followers on Twitter. It helps that he is very cute and fluffy, which seems to attract the twitterati, plus we did have a video play on BBC Breakfast last year which helped!

Basil is a rescue cat from Cats Protection in Bridgend, Wales. He weighs about 12lb and is stocky in build. Its unknown if he is all Persian or only part, but he is a classic tabby pattern Persian.

The classic tabby has bold, swirling patterns along its sides — much like a marble cake – and some of it’s smudges closely resembles a bullseye.

You can read Basil’s adoption story on a friend’s blog here: https://catconcenter.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/basils-adoption/

I won’t repeat it all here, but suffice to say, our first few months were quite a journey. Its taken a while to get him to be the happy confident kitty who now greets me when I get home.

Twitter and the cat world is amazing and at the same time all a bit crazy. It’s like an extended family and we love it. Basil so far has joined @Theaviatorsclub – where they do animal airplane flying courses, @Zombiesquadhq – animals saving the world against Zombies, and we’ve taken part in several moving #tributerides for other friends who have gone over the rainbow bridge.

Ok, so really its just me having some fun (Basil’s paws are far to big to type), but I have met some really wonderful and interesting people all over the world via Basil’s twitter and now we email and are in regular contact. We have even receievd a hand-made painting sent to us of Basil, from a talented lady in Japan.

What a strange but amazing world we live in – made all the better with social media!

Here he is:

Here is the picture from Japan: