Mr Grey was an alpha-male Visiting Cat who had a soft spot for The Cat. He was a handsome cat who would while away the afternoons in the drive, waiting for his beloved to return from the fields to the garden for her tea.

Unfortunately for Ana Half-Tail, Mr Grey’s desire to add The Cat’s Garden to his domain (and, more importantly, The Cat to his list of conquests) meant that Ana soon became Mr Grey’s number one adversary. Mr Grey would lie in wait for Ana in the garden, making himself at home in what he hoped would soon be ‘his’ garden.

Naturally, the humans’ loyalty was towards Ana Half-Tail who they had been feeding for the past few years, and Mr Grey soon became The Evil Grey as he picked fight after fight with Ana in his determination to drive Ana away.

And yet, sometimes when The Evil Grey was relaxing and showed his softer side, it was hard not to feel some fondness for him, some admiration for his single-minded dedication to claiming The Cat and her garden as his own. Despite his being one of only two cats to bite me in the many years we cared for them, he had a soft side which was hard to ignore.

And then he disappeared, as did Ana. Other alpha-male cats came and went and, when a grey gentleman arrived in the garden a few years later, it didn’t occur to us that this could be the same cat. We named the ‘new’ cat Sunday.

He made himself at home from day one, and it wasn’t long before we realised that Mr Grey aka The Evil Grey had acquired a third name. Sunday was by now a mature gentleman. He had mellowed and became very affectionate and even possessive of his human feeders (although he was not averse to putting other male cats in their place).

These photos of Mr Grey aka The Evil Grey aka Sunday in his later years show his softer side – probably something that would have made him shudder as he went about his alpha-male business in the fields.