The singer and her cat had been inseparable for 13 years and, when Dusty, 59, realized she could no longer fight the breast cancer that was ravaging her body, she was determined to make sure Nicholas would not suffer too much.

So she quietly "willed" Nicholas to one of her best friends, Lee Everett-Alkin, the widow of former top British DJ Kenny Everett. Lee, a faith healer and animal lover whose first husband was 1960s pop idol Billy Fury, who also left her a widow, is now giving Nicholas a life of luxury.

She and her husband, John Alkin, have made sure that Nicholas - a Californian rag-doll cat that Dusty bought when she lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s - will never forget his beloved mistress. He sleeps on a pillow slip from Dusty's death bed and nuzzles up to the nightgown she wore when she died at her home in Harpsden, near Henley, Oxfordshire, three weeks ago.

Nicholas dines on tinned baby food specially imported from the United States. Dusty arranged for a year's supply to be flown over to Britain just days before she died. And Nicholas has tapes of her hits playing to comfort him during his catnaps.

But the highliht of Nicholas' new life is his home-from-home, an indoor tree house studded with hearts, which Dusty bought him when they lived briefly in the Netherlands. The wooden house, with its "garden" of foliage and carpeted "apartments", is so heavy that it took two men to carry it into the house.

Inside the bungalow, a wire-mesh grill separates Nicholas from Lee's own cat, Purrdie, and her dogs Tumble and Scruff. But Nicholas might get an extra treat because Lee is planning an "arranged" marriage for him and Purrdie.

"I'm serious," she said. "It's what Dusty wanted. She always felt the cats should be together. We used to joke how wonderful it would be if they had kittens, but they've both been spayed."

Ian Markham-Smith
South China Morning Post,
April 6, 1999