Cat feeding in the early days was done in the driveway and was for the resident cats, namely The Cat and her son Ana Half-Tail. Free feeding in the garden, drive and front path was still a year or two away, and The Cat was still staunchly feral and wary of humans.

So the arrival of The Cat’s kittens was something that the humans observed from a distance, not venturing to the garden for fear of frightening them away. However, it was impossible not to be won over by these four small furry characters, and the humans’ well-documented epic failure when it came to naming the kittens should have been a clue to what the future might hold as naming the kittens according to the colour of their fur was no different from giving them any other sort of names, and was not going to prevent us from becoming attached to them.

During the long hot summer days, finding a suitably shaded spot for siesta was a priority, and Tabby and Blackie (who we observed spent a lot of time in each other’s company) favoured sleeping under the olive tree. Tabby was by nature the less adventurous of the two, but excelled himself on the day he earned his nickname ‘Tabby Bucket-Head’. Quite what Tabby’s thinking was when he fell asleep with his head inside a plastic pail in the middle of the day, we’ll never know.

Suffice to say that, however cool he might have been when he fell asleep, as the sun moved over the branches above and the heat built up, Tabby awoke in a stifled panic of hot bucketty air, his thrashing legs (as he escaped the pail backwards) startling Blackie who was peacefully asleep, dreaming happy kitten dreams.

The pail remained under the olive tree, just as it had been on that day, but Tabby had learnt a lesson and future siestas were taken in the open. Blackie had also learnt a lesson and his future siestas were taken on top of the garden wall in the shade of the olive tree where he had found a fold of hanging garden netting which stopped short of the wall which made a perfect hammock for a small kitten to nap on a warm day. Ginge slumbered peacefully on the wall itself, giving the impression of two kittens enjoying their bunk beds.

Tabby continued to take his siesta under the olive tree, ‘en plein air’.