As the days passed and the kittens started to spend more time out of their twiggy den on the terrace under the watchful eye of Sprocket, we brought a fruit box from the garden to the terrace, lined with garden netting and handfuls of dried olive leaves. Sprocket immediately claimed it. It was where she would lie to feed the kittens; they enjoyed climbing over the box as well as over Sprocket and the netting and olive leaves gave it a homely feel.

In addition to being the kittens’ feeding place, it became somewhere for them to play and tussle. They could scramble over and through the ends, and used the box rather like a boxing ring.

Within the next couple of days, the last of the kittens (and The Cat, who had been nursing the smaller ones) emerged from the twiggy den, so we provided another box so each of the mothers had their own. The kittens were happy as they now had two boxes in which to adventure.

Considering the terrace was now home to nine cats, with the exception of olive leaves, there was very little mess. Despite the mothers having very different characters, they seemed to be abiding by the same unspoken rules.