In the country, the life of a lost or strayed cat is terribly hard. Not that it's any treat in the city, but at least the dangerous urban environment offers enough humans to raise the odds of at least one hospitable household per acre into the "possible" range.

When my family lived in a country village, stray cats would appear at the kitchen door and more often than not my parents would at least offer food. I remember one who moved in with us, a little grey female my mother named Susie, but she was so traumatized that she never settled down properly to being a housecat. She disappeared one day, and I never learned her fate. That was well over fifty years ago, and still a sad memory.