Tommaso grew up as a stray cat on the hard streets of Rome. But he's come up in the world and, with the death of his human, has inherited an enormous sum:

Since the death of his 94-year-old mistress last month, he has become a property magnate — or perhaps mognate — with flats and houses worth an estimated €10m scattered from Milan in the north to Calabria in the south.

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".

Link -via Dave Barry | Photo of a different cat via Flickr user Willie Lunchmeat