Once Dinky had settled down, it was clear that he had no desire to fight his way up the alpha-male ladder, although his best friend Longtail (a young black cat who Dinky had met in the fields) did.

So, in a way, that made their friendship all the stronger as Longtail did not perceive Dinky as a threat – well, not to start with anyway, although the following year Longtail’s ideas had changed somewhat and he and Dinky spent less time adventuring together and more time fighting.

In the early days, they were joined by another cat, a third member of The Three Mouseketeers (as Dinky and Longtail’s gang was called) – Quink, a sassy black-and-white young female feral cat from the fields. It was impossible to know whether Longtail and Quink already knew each other, but it was unlikely that they would have met Dinky previously as he had been dumped in the fields that spring and had definitely not grown up there.

It seemed a strange little group – the noisy, demanding, Bengal cat, the sleek, handsome, black male, and the wary, young black-and-white lady.

And yet they got on well. They were spotted together on the roof of the farmer’s store in the neighbouring field, on the wall between the drive and the fields, in the front path and in the drive. They weren’t inseperable – Dinky liked human company and enjoyed the company of the Garden Family; Longtail had his own agenda out in the fields making a name for himself, and Quink divided her time between the fields on both sides of the road.

It was fascinating watching how these relationships developed, often in the most unlikely places.