The following spring brought two nice surprises.

Firstly, there was a sighting of Lightning, who had arrived as a small, lone kitten and spent exactly six months in the garden before disappearing 15 months ago.

We had always wondered where he had gone, but having seen him systematically exploring the local fields in a very purposeful way, we had assumed that he was searching for wherever he had originally started life, before he got lost and ended up at The Cat’s Garden.

One evening at dusk, he came to the field. It was definitely him – although we hadn’t set eyes on him for 15 months, we recognised him immediately; he was just a bigger version of that little determined kitten who had arrived out of the blue that spring day. He sat for five or ten minutes, staring fixedly at the humans on the terrace, before turning and walking away across the fields. It looked as though he really had found where he belonged and returned to his original home, and he wanted to let us know that he was OK.

The second surprise was the arrival of a stocky, mature male cat who we named Sunday (after the day he arrived). He seemed remarkably relaxed in the garden (almost as though it was familiar to him) and accustomed to having humans around.

After a short while, we realised that this was in fact Mr Grey who had not been seen for two years – he was one of the cats who had a home up the road but preferred to roam. His new name stuck and he remained Sunday, making him the first cat to have three names – Mr Grey, then The Evil Grey, and finally Sunday.