For several days, the kittens remained hidden under the branches at the end of the terrace. Then they started to emerge, the strongest first, closely supervised by Sprocket. The Cat remained under the branches with the weaker kittens until, over the next few days, they too emerged. It seemed that the strongest kittens were The Cat’s – not a surprise, since this was Sprocket’s first litter.

Of course, the kittens were duly named. The Cat had two male ginger-and-white kittens whom we named Orangiboom (the bigger, fluffier one) and Tippex (as he had a white tip to his tail), and a grey-and-white female tabby whom we named Big Bang.

The Cat also had a black kitten (the runt of the litter) whom we named Boss, but as the days went by it sounded too harsh a name when spoken out loud, so Boss became Prince. Sprocket also had a smaller grey-and-white tabby – he was very similar to The Cat’s daughter Big Bang, so we named him Little Bang.

Like her mother, Sprocket had given birth to two ginger kittens, but only one had survived, a russet-orange boy who was second-to-last to emerge from the nest. We called him Early Lately.

And last to emerge and by far the smallest, was an almost white kitten (actually a very dilute calico) whom we called Snopake.

We felt privileged that The Cat and Sprocket had chosen to bring their kittens to the first-floor terrace, literally under our windows and a couple of steps away from the kitchen door, and we were happy to kitten-sit when the mothers needed a few minutes away and time to themselves.

We put two boxes out for the mothers to lie in to nurse, and the kittens started their voyage of exploration.