Leaving it all to cats

Recently two pieces of literature set me to pondering this question. The first, that Disney classic, The Aristocats. In it, the doting cat-owner decides to make a will and leave the money to her cats and in the end sets up a home for the homeless cats of Paris.

The second is a favorite little book of mine called Addy Pray, on which the movie “Paper Moon” with Ryan and Tatem O’Neal was based. The book goes into a lot more larceny than the movie and is so funny. But I digress. In that book, there is an offhand reference to a senile old lady they want to bilk before she leaves all her money to her cats.

My question – has anyone ever really left money to cats in a will? If not, any guesses as to how it got to be such a common little bit of wisdom?

(Not that the two items I cited have any resemblence to reality, but I mention it anyway – the Aristocats is set in the early 1900s, it seems, and Addy Pray is set in the 1930s. But they were probably written in the '60s or '70s; I could look it up.)

You can leave money to pets in a will, sort of.
I have signed a will (as a witness) that set aside an amount of money that would go to a friend who would look after the decedent’s dogs. That seems to be the proper way to do it.
To actually leave money directly to a pet might make a great literary story…but in actual practice it doesn’t seem an option a competent family attorney would suggest or allow.

Sure you can. If one is determined to do it, the preferred way is to set up a trust for them; the trustee will spend the money to care for the animals during their lives.

I can recall a woman in the U.S. with a substantial estate doing the above for all the stray dogs she’d collected (she had something like 150 of them when she died), and whatever was left after the last dog died was to go to a charity, as I recall. Can’t find any references to it on the web, but I believe the last dog was named Musketeer, and died the richest dog in America.

In a will, you can state that you may state basically that the cats must live within the comforts of their own dwelling (your mansion) for the duration of their lives and stipulate that a successor of the will may live ‘to care’ for the cats till the end of their lives. After that, usually the successor of the estate will become the inheritor.

And yes, it can be stipulated that the cats must be in good care at all times (as viewed by a lawyer or server of the will) lest the successor lose their inheritance due to what is deemed misttreatment by the lawyer or will. So no tossing the cats after the ol lady cacks.
Check Guiness Records, there is a trio of cats that inherited some 21 million dollars for a ol bag that was soft in the ol casaba

I figure my girlfriend is gonna do this to me. 4 cats and a rabbit in my house already. By the time she is going, I figure I will be living with some 97 cats.

THE COUNTESS WHO LEFT HER FORTUNE TO HER 280 PET DOGS
The future of the Countess Clothilde Baratieri Sforza’s estate, estimated to be worth ‘‘tens of millions’’ of pounds, became a matter of urgent concern for her family
A Milanese countess, in a snub to the Italian state which she said had unfairly denied her “the right as an unmarried woman to adopt a human being as a son,” has left her entire fortune to her 280 pet dogs.
The future of the Countess Clothilde Baratieri Sforza’s estate, estimated to be worth “tens of millions” of pounds, became a matter of urgent concern for her family, when no trace of a will could be found after her death in Milan in late summer this year, aged 79. But after her homes were turned upside down in a determined search, a will was found in a drawer of her main residence in the city’s Piazza Castello.
But to relatives’ chagrin, in it the Countess was found to have left everything to the nearly 300 dogs who had kept her company in her various residences around town. There, some 40 servants had been encharged with the job of feeding and cleaning the animals, and taking them for walks. The veterinary bills are believed to have well exceeded the countess’s own personal medical expenses. As a result of the will, all the people employed by the countess will remain in their jobs, in order to look after the dogs, and live together with them in the same properties.

–I guess we’re talking semantics here. It makes good newspaper copy to say a dog or a cat or a rat “inherited” a fortune, but that’s not quite the case.
You don’t really leave the loot directly to the animal(s). You leave the money in a trust to look after the welfare of the animal(s).
By the way, setting up a will to include the welfare of Blackie or Fido is something the majority of people forget about, which is a shame.