RICH CAT
Last month an Italian woman, Marisa Assunta, died of old age at 94 years old. Not an earth-shattering headline I realize. The hook, this woman left her entire estate, worth 13 million dollars, to her cat. Yes, you heard me. Mr. Fuzzykins, a stray that this woman took in and clearly was besotted with, is now the wealthiest cat in the world (fine, the cat’s name is actually Tommaso, but that just didn’t have the same ring to it).
The problem is, in Italy, like the good old US of A, you are not allowed to leave your estate to a pet. The woman in question had no living relatives and clearly no friends she felt deserved such a fortune, so I’m thinking she did what any person in her position would do…leave it to an animal that loved her unconditionally…and has very little purchasing power.
Okay, I get it, humans suck for the most part, so why not set your pet up for life instead. The problem is most cats live on average from 14-16 years so that is one hell of a lot of cat food that cat will have to consume until it drops dead (from overeating I’m thinking). Then again, maybe we’re just not thinking big enough. If it were Puff Daddy’s cat (is that what he’s going by these days?), that thing would be head to toe in diamond-encrusted bling with baby Gucci cat shoes and a carrying case made of solid gold. Not to mention its own employee hired simply to brush it’s tiny cat hair with a yellow canary diamond encrusted brush. Now that’s how you start burning through 13 million dollars my friends.
The estate attorneys (who are clearly frothing at the bit for a piece of this pie) decided that both the cat and the money are now going to the nurse who looked after Ms. Assunta. My question however is this, if this elderly woman liked her nurse so much and thought she was doing a bang up job looking after her, why didn’t she leave the money to her in the first place? In fact, maybe she detested the sight of her because the nurse sat around all day neglecting her, eating tiramisu and watching Italian soap operas. (This is just conjecture, I’m sure the woman was a wonderful nurse).
However, it does give one pause does it not? Apparently the nurse had NO idea the woman was in fact so wealthy which makes me wonder how the heck Ms. Assunta was sitting on 13 million dollars and no one knew about it. I’ll bet you 13 million dollars that the cat knew. Cats are so damn smart that way.