Like most people, I’ve been scammed a few times in my life. An unfair sticker exchange in primary school, an ‘investment’ Beanie Baby, a laptop that disappeared into thin air — and a tiny, fluffy black kitten.

It’s fair to say I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I got her. The startup I’d ended up running had effectively gone bust, and I was mired in a swamp of shame and self-loathing. I took some time off from work, mostly because I no longer had a job and was too emotionally exhausted to do anything else yet, and sat at home trying to forget myself while my partner carried on his 9-5.

Before long, I got lonely. I went to visit my family, and saw my mum’s gorgeous 12-year-old Maine Coon Cooper in failing health. It was clear he wasn’t long for this world, and in my sadness and mental fog, I decided that clearly, the best thing to do right now was spend SIX HUNDRED POUNDS that I definitely didn’t have on a Maine Coon kitten. I’d have my own little Cooper, which would ease the pain of losing him and keep me company (read: give me something to get out of bed for).

As you’ve probably surmised, the unbelievably expensive kitten I bought was in fact not a Maine Coon. She wasn’t anything I was told, actually. I paid for a vaccinated 12-week old male pedigree with papers, and I got an unvaccinated 8-week-old female domestic longhair.

This was entirely my own fault. While I’m normally a massive advocate of rescuing rather than buying animals, I really wasn’t myself, and when I found a conveniently available Maine Coon kitten that could be delivered to me so I didn’t even have to face the outside world, I put all my critical thinking skills in the bin and believed every word. Even though it was on Gumtree. Gumtree! I could slap myself.

The scammer brought the kitten round the next day, stayed for a cup of tea and a blithe chat, and had the nerve to charge me for petrol. I was shocked by how small the kitten was, but Scammy McGee assured me it had just been a large litter and she’d grow quickly. Since she was a longhaired kitten, was all black, and had the oversized ears of a tiny catlet, she looked enough like a Maine Coon that I didn’t question it. I got my vaccination paperwork (fake) and pedigree papers (Photoshopped) and the scammer skipped off, never to be seen again.

As I unravelled all the lies I’d been told over the next few weeks (with the help of my apoplectic vet), I expected to feel resentful. I’d missed the chance to offer a good home to a rescue, and instead paid an extortionate amount of money for a normal cat I could have adopted for next to nothing.

But I didn’t feel angry. I looked at this tiny ball of fluff who’d most likely come from some sort of horrendous kitten mill (a rescue in her own right, really), had definitely been taken from her mum too soon, and was too young to even use a litter tray (she peed in my iPhone box and I laughed so hard I nearly peed myself), and all I wanted was to protect her and give her a good life. She wasn’t a Maine Coon, she wasn’t a boy, and she definitely wasn’t a pedigree, but she was a healthy baby cat with wide, loving eyes and I was smitten. It felt like a lesson from the universe: yes, you can have a cat to love, but you can forget all this superficial nonsense. You’ll get what you’re given, and like it.

Since I’d mentioned my experience on an online group, over the next few months I was contacted by other people who’d bought kittens from the same person. It turned out this was a large-scale scamming operation in multiple cities. Some of those people weren’t as lucky as me: their kittens were very ill, or weren’t kittens at all. One mother had helped her autistic son save up for a Maine Coon specifically because he loved the breed, and he’d ended up with a short-haired ginger and white tabby you could find on any street corner. That made me far angrier than what had happened to me, so I went along with the group fraud filing to try and recoup their losses.

The case is still ongoing (it’s taking so long that my little kitten — called Mawri from a Welsh word meaning ‘small and important’ — is nearly two), but it doesn’t look like it’ll be going anywhere, and even if it does, it’d be ridiculously simple to set up the scam again. I’d warn you off buying animals on the internet, but anyone with half a brain cell knows that already, including me — just not in the depths of depression. But of course it’s vulnerable people, like that poor autistic child, that these charlatans prey on.

The detective asked whether I’d like to return the kitten and get my money back. They might as well have asked if I’d like some human poo in my tea. LORD no. If I could turn back time, I wouldn’t change a thing — except perhaps kicking the scammer in the shins on her way out. Obviously, I wish I hadn’t helped fund her kitten mill, but I have to trust that karma (or the police) will get her eventually. She’s definitely getting eaten by cats when she dies.

Meanwhile, Mawri is the most beautiful ray of light that has ever shone into my life, and she changed everything. Getting up to feed and fuss this needy fluff that would pee on anything vaguely crunchy (including my favourite prom dress) gave me the motivation I needed to pull myself out of the hole. And a year later, I got her a friend: a 9-month-old rescue whose owners had moved abroad without him, which helped to ease my guilt about not helping a homeless puss.

I wanted to tell the story of my counterfeit cat not only to warn people about these types of scams, but also to highlight that something ostensibly terrible — like being scammed out of £600 — can end up being the best thing that ever happened to you. In fact, I’d say it’s the best £600 I’ve ever spent.

Tech addict Holly Brockwell founded Gadgette in 2015, and won Woman of the Year for it. She’s firmly #TeamAndroid, has ambitions to become a robot, and beat all other Hollies to her awesome Twitter handle.