My Egyptian mau pyramid scheme

Was it chance or destiny, I wonder, that caused the eldest of our six children, Caterina, to pull over in the dead of night and park the car where she did? She was on her way back with a young man from a beach party down the coast and had stopped next to a derelict farmhouse so she could look for shooting stars in the endless night and make a wish. That is how she found the latest animals to join our household: a very strange silver-grey cat with long legs and blackish spots and a single kitten who looked exactly the same in miniature.

This tiny kitten constantly interrupted the star-gazing activities of Caterina and her suitor by straying out on to the road, followed by its mother, who was so weak that she looked half-dead. Each time Caterina, who is 21 this week, would go and pick up the kitten and carry it back to a shed next to the farmhouse which appeared to be their home.