Visitor Cat was one of the first regular visitors to The Cat’s garden, although she quickly became a regular visitor to the garden wall once The Cat had made her feelings known and roundly chased Visitor out of the garden.

Visitor came from another garden across the fields where a group of cats was also fed. A few times we saw Visitor walk carefully up a slanted drainpipe and disappear through a window into the washroom on the roof of an outbuilding in the garden, so there was obviously food and shelter available over there.

Over the years, several other cats came from this garden, for instance Thundercat, Ghost and BBC, to name but a few. We had no way of knowing whether these cats were related, but one thing which a number of them had in common was a plush tail.

Visitor’s tail was very long and fluffy although not particularly thick.

She and The Cat were quite similar in appearance and you could have been forgiven for thinking that they were related, which might have accounted for The Cat’s antagonism towards Visitor. But rumour had it that The Cat had been brought from another village to the garden to provide rodent control services – whether this was true or not, there was no way of knowing.

Another female who came from the same garden as Visitor was Ghost Cat. She had long, plump, fluffy tail and was incredibly food-motivated. One thing that the cats from this other garden had in common was that they were accustomed to humans although not necessarily friendly – but they knew that humans meant food, and that made them acceptable, albeit it sometimes at a slight distance.

Funnily, The Cat had no problem with Ghost and there was never the slightest hint of aggression on either part.

And then there was BBC (short for Big Black Cat). He was blessed with a furry plume of a tail and a laid-back nature. He had no intention of fighting his way to the top of the alpha-male tree, and was content to mix with the Garden Family and join them at mealtimes.

And once BBC became a regular visitor, kittens with similarly spectacular tails started to appear – but more of them another time – for today, please enjoy photos of Visitor, Ghost and BBC with their marvellous tails.