A four-year-old black stray cat in Italy has become the world’s richest cat after the death of his 94-year-old mistress.
Tommaso, who was once a stray in Rome, has flats and houses worth an estimated €10 million scattered from Milan in the north to Calabria in the south of Italy.
According to The Guardian, in a handwritten will signed on 26 November, 2009, Tommaso’s mistress — the childless widow of a successful builder — gave her lawyers the task of identifying “the animal welfare body or association to which to leave the inheritance and the task of looking after the cat Tommaso”.
One of the lawyers, Anna Orecchioni, told the Rome daily newspaper Il Messaggero they considered several organisations without getting adequate guarantees of the cat’s future comfort and welfare.
In the meantime though, the mistress met a fellow cat-lover, Stefania, in a park. “Sometimes I’d go to her house so my cat could play with Tommaso,” Stefania said.
As the old lady became increasingly frail, Stefania, a nurse, began to take care of her.
“She needed someone to help her move around, shower and eat. I looked after until the end,” she said.
Under Italian law, animals cannot inherit directly. But they can be beneficiaries if a suitable trustee is found. Before her death, the elderly widow decided to entrust the cat – and his fortune – to Stefania.
Tommaso’s trustee, who is now looking after him at an undisclosed address outside Rome, said: “I had no idea the signora had such wealth.”
But even though Tommaso may be the world’s richest cat, the world’s richest pet of all-time is Gunther IV, an Alsatian who inherited from his father Gunther III, the pet of a German countess. According to the Pet Gazette, he is worth around $372m.
View Comments
Loading ...
