Muffin was born to Phantom on the far side of the fields on the opposite side of the road. Phantom was black-and-white, and her litter consisted of Muffin (completely black), Crumpet (grey-and-white) and Rocky (tabby). Sadly, Crumpet and Rocky lost their lives on the road, and Muffin grew into his mother’s protector, coming together to eat in the front path and drive until he was adult.

Muffin was feral and never friendly, as a younger cat waiting in the fields until the humans had gone indoors before coming to eat; here you can see two eyes staring from a coal-black face – yes, that’s Muffin.

Muffin roamed the fields and was an occasional visitor to the garden where he befriended Flora’s daughter, Swift, who, like Muffin, was a loner. They seemed to understand each other and spent time together, eating next to each other and napping together on our neighbours’ aviary roof.

But Muffin was an ambitious cat and had his eye on becoming one of the neighbourhood alpha-males. When he came to the garden, he would invariably pick on Pascha who he must have singled out as the most likely contender for the top position in a year or so. Despite being partially sighted, Pascha usually came out better and most of their confrontations were limited to circling around each other and wailing, until Muffin decided to leave.

As the months passed and Muffin became more mature, he naturally crossed paths with the younger aspiring alpha-males such as Thundercat who, at at least two years older than Muffin, had a lot more experience. Once again, these confrontations rarely came to anything, probably because Muffin knew that he would not come out of them well.

And maybe that was why Muffin decided to concentrate his efforts on the other side of the road where there was another garden where cats were fed with no other up-and-coming males to get in the way of his advancement up the alpha-male ladder – after all, there was plenty of room in the fields for each cat to have their own territory and avoid fighting.