Let's see:

My first cat was Emmeline Pankhurst, a noted punisher of the tomcats who strolled the German village where I lived at the time.

Years later, when I finally managed to escape apartment house living, Black Maria and her sister Batsy came into my life, quickly followed by Perdita (also black), a foundling kitten we raised on Carnation milk and weaned on Cream of Wheat. Batsy disappeared in a snowstorm at the age of about three and Maria was struck by a car at five; Perdita lived to be 19, and died of a stroke in the act of leaping for the kitchen table.

Alexander the Great, another desperate stray, was a long-haired sand-coloured tomcat of substantial size; he, too, died young, of kidney stones. Lucy was a black-and-white stunted starveling found hunting for food in a garbage can behind a convenience store; when we started feeding her, she grew to the size of a hassock, though her early privations led to bone deformities and, later in life, crippling arthritis. She lived well into her teens and died of breast cancer, of all things.

Cecil was yet another stray, a black tomcat who marched into the house when I took the garbage out and left the door open. I named him after Cecil Rhodes because he was small and pushy, but he turned out to be a real charmer. He died at five of pancreatic disease. A few months later, Bill arrived at the back door, hammering with his paws and meowing loudly for rescue. He was filthy, sick, wounded and starving, he had clearly had enough of life on the street. Bill was named after W.H. Davies, author of the Victorian memoir "Diary of a Super Tramp".

After Bill came Rosie, originally known as Tokyo; we added Rose because who could call a cat Tokyo?. Rosie is a Tortoise-shell Point Oriental Shorthair (she looks like a Siamese with a bad streak job) who was foisted on us by the wife of my old college buddy James. Rosie left our household three years later because, after Bill's death, she took to being the only cat in the house with a too much enthusiasm; when we acquired two kittens, Watson and Isobel (now three and a half years old and running the joint), she terrorized them to the point of breaking down their litter training. Rosie is now the light of an aging bachelor's life, having been adopted by an old school pal of my brother's.

Watson and Isobel are the current incumbents, two black cats from a litter of nine in which all the male kittens were given names beginning with W; we were just thankful that we didn't end up with Wendell. Isobel was originally named Cupcake, which we thought she would grow out of, so we renamed her for Isobel Bayrakdarian, who is also dark and beautiful.

And that's the lot of them -- so far!