It was inevitable that there would be fighting among the alpha-males – it was part of their way of life and hierarchy is an important part of feral cats’ societal structure.

Different dominant males had their own styles of making their presence felt. Saturday, for instance, was a master in the art of intimidation. He would loom over a junior male, hackles up, back arched, inching in; the junior would be expecting an attack any moment, cringing in anticipation. And then, Saturday would very slowly back off, maintaining his aggressive posture but slowly putting more space between them. The junior cat would be left wondering ‘what if?’ and feeling that he had a narrow escape – something he would remember next time he saw Saturday.

This photo of Boomerang backing away from Mr Bright on the wall in the drive shows the power of intimidation; Mr Bright’s body-language was aggressive and Boomerang was ready to flee, but, on the other hand, he didn’t want to turn his back on Mr Bright.

At the other end of the scale were alpha-male cats such as NVQ, whose approach was less subtle. Sometimes NVQ would lie in wait and blindside his victim, other times he would go for the full-frontal attack. And he was a ferocious fighter. Here NVQ faced Longtail in the fields. Both cats had their ears back, hackles raised, and were wailing loudly and poised to attack (despite being seated). In fact, a few moments later, NVQ attacked and they literally leapt as one, attached to each other by teeth and claws, into the grass on the left of the photo. There was a brief but vicious fight, and then they both shook themselves and walked away.

Two versus one was quite unusual, but here Thundercat and BBC were making il-Ħadd feel less than welcome. Thundercat and BBC had originally come from another garden across the fields and might possibly have been related; il-Ħadd was not a regular visitor to the garden and Thundercat and BBC took the unusual step of ganging up on him.

The header photo shows Thundercat and Muffin in one of those in-between occasions where there was a lot of growling and wailing, flattened ears and arched backs, where cats looked twice their normal size, but in the end there was no actual fighting.

Wars were not only fought with fangs and claws but with psychological tools; it was all part of the fascinating life of feral cats which we were privileged to witness at first hand.