We always wondered whether the kittens who were part of The Cat and her daughter Sprocket’s big combined family actually knew which mother was theirs. It seemed sometimes that the mothers knew which kittens belonged to them, but the other way round – who knows?

The kittens were together from the day Sprocket’s litter was born, a few days after The Cat’s; they remained in a squirming pile of fur behind a pile of twigs in the garden for their first two weeks. This was Sprocket’s first litter and she was a very attentive mother, rarely straying more than a few steps away from the nest. When the kittens were a few days old, one human would walk round the garden with Sprocket in the evening after tea while the other stood guard at the entrance to the nest; except for this, Sprocket would have remained close to the kittens 24/7. The Cat’s attitude was more relaxed; she was an experienced mother and had done all this before.

When the kittens were two weeks old, Sprocket carried them one by one to the first floor terrace where she put them under a pile of (freshly-pruned) olive branches. As the kittens got stronger, they came out of the nest with the mothers and would feed all together, in fruit boxes which we had provided.

After two weeks on the terrace, Sprocket carried the kittens back down to the garden to start weaning. They gravitated towards the pods where they spent the nights cuddled up together; there was enough room for one of the mothers to join them, and sufficient height for her to sit up and feed.

As they outgrew the pods, they started to sleep in the open or in one of the greengrocer’s boxes, but their preference was still to remain in a pile. The Cat and Sprocket took it in turns to feed, but the kittens were growing bigger and could be left to their own devices for a short while now.

But still, even without their mothers, the kittens’ preference remained to sleep in a pile. Sometimes it was hard to decipher which kitten was where and which head/ears/legs/tail belonged to which kitten!

Snopake was the runt of Sprocket’s litter and was the smallest of them all. Initially she slept in the middle of the pile, sometimes with just her head or ears showing. But as they outgrew their fruit boxes, they started to become more independent, napping on their own

All the colours of the mothers were represented; The Cat had two orange-and-white boys, one grey-and-white girl, and a black kitten. Sprocket had one orange boy, one grey-and-white boy, and a dilute tortoiseshell girl who was almost white. Their colours melded harmoniously together in one big puddle of fur, blending perfectly together as befitted the big, happy family that they were.