The Visiting Cat who had the longest record of coming to eat was Madam Kiwi whose name appears in six consecutive years.

She arrived as a shaky, malnourished lady, who we later realised had been born with cerebellar hypoplasia, guided to the garden by Dinky one summer evening. Kiwi became a regular visitor to the drive and front path, visiting the garden less frequently as negotiating the walls and the olive tree was tricky for a CH cat (and The Cat had taken a dislike to her).

Following Kiwi in terms of years were three of the neighbourhood alpha-males – NVQ who visited for five years, Mr Bright, and Sunday (aka Mr Grey aka The Evil Grey) who each were listed in four separate years.

NVQ was fiercely feral, one of the top alpha-males who was ruthlessly ambitious. He was never friendly and eschewed human contact.

Mr Bright was probably NVQ’s closest rival and, while NVQ felt more comfortable in the fields on the opposite side of the road, Mr Bright made the fields on the same side as the garden his domain, which was probably why we saw more of him.

Sunday’s four years were not consecutive as there was an entire year when he wasn’t seen, but he was regular in the garden where he protested his feelings of love to The Cat on many occasions.

Twilight, a brindle-and-white tortoiseshell lady who roamed the fields, was also listed in four consecutive years.

She was a favourite of NVQ’s and maybe that was how she found her way to the garden, as her ‘home territory’ seemed to be the fields on the other side of the culvert (which was quite a way away for a lone cat, especially a mother with kittens), and we discovered in later years that she was known to some other cat feeders in the next village, and had been spotted in the vineyards on the other side of the road – an unusually large area for a female feral cat to roam.

All these Visiting Cats were mature adults when we first saw them, and, rather like The Cat, we can only guess at how old they were. They certainly were well-established in the neighbourhood, confident, and at ease with each other.