At our old house we had an endless string of strays. There were a couple of old ladies lived just around the corner who once had individual adjacent houses but then moved in together and a whole herd of strays then moved into the empty one - It must have stunk! The herd spread until they were a pest unfortunately.

We moved out 5 years ago so we don't know what happened since but the old ladies (twins) featured in one of Alan Titchmarsh's garden makeovers a couple of years back! They had given up the big houses and moved into a newer bungalow just behind where we used to live. Our cats are much happier in their new home without all the visitors but I do miss them sometimes.

The ones we fed most often were Pepe (le pew), a big gentle tom; Boo, a skittish pure white oriental type; Maven, small, friendly, all black; and Mim, a little tabby that used to climb up the ivy at the back and shout at us until we fed her! Then there was the Commander - Big nasty alpha tom with bits missing. We used to discourage him! Pepe was like the lovely old grandad who looked after others. He brought Lily round to live with us :-) We think he may have once been the alpha but was ousted by the Commander. He seemed happy with his new role and wandered from house to house and even to the back door of a local charity shop for his daily treats.

Don't know if has been mentioned before but a good fantasy read about cats is the Wild Road series by Gabriel King. The synopsis of the first one (that the series is titled after) is "A novel about Tag, a naive young cat called upon to find the Queen of Cats from the Alchemist: if the Alchemist catches her first, the world will never be safe again. In the course of a great journey across a country and through the whole history of cats, Tag learns what it is to be a cat. " I enjoyed it anyway.