A brief revival of the true purpose of the internet: pictures of cats. But also, in this instance, rather nice stories about them, too.

My number one cat (the stripy one), Tiger, is seven, and since I acquired him when he was 10 months old (when he was given up, because he didn't get on with his initial family's other cat), he has very much enjoyed his position as an "only child", to the extent it would have been quite unthinkable to get another cat.

However - as they often do - late last year, another cat got us.

A small black cat started persistently coming in through the catflap and eating Tiger's food. Assuming he was simply an opportunistic neighbourhood cat, we would shoo him away.

But, he wasn't having any of it, and kept coming back. It got to the point where, when I would come downstairs in the morning, I would hear sudden scuttling and the catflap go, so - knowing Tiger was asleep upstairs - it seemed the black cat was likely sleeping here, too.

By the time it had got to December, we realised it was futile to keep shooing him out, so we might as well get used to the idea that we now had a second, "visiting", cat. So, the next time he came in, gingerly tip-toeing through the kitchen and looking up nervously when he realised he'd been rumbled, we said to him, "it's okay, don't worry - you can stay this time" - and he understood!

He immediately leapt up onto the armchair, curled into a ball, and started purring.

I went over to stroke him, and upon so doing, realised he was in a really bad way - very skinny, and absolutely covered in infected flea bites. He also didn't have a collar, leading us to the conclusion he was homeless, rather than a neighbourhood cat on the make.

So, it seemed, rather than merely having additional feline visitation, we now actually had a second cat.

In the months since December, we have nursed him back to health, and now he is in superb condition - robust and solid with a very sleek coat, and not a flea or a bite to be seen. He also happens to have the most wonderful temperament of any cat I have ever met - he is extremely friendly and affectionate, and he never, ever scratches or bites - but what is most adorable of all is how he looks at us - his "saviours", I guess - with absolute, wide-eyed devotion. Cats are supposed to dislike eye contact, but this one positively insists upon it - it's very adorable.

We named him Olly (a contraction of Molly, after we realised he was not in fact a girl!).

We have always wondered, of course, where he came from and what his backstory is, but couldn't see any way of finding out... Although we had noticed a cat almost identical to Olly sometimes hanging around in our back garden.

"Well," We thought. "That doesn't necessarily mean anything. After all, there are a lot of black cats."

However, today when I was taking the bins out, the woman who lives in the house opposite was coming into her back gate at the same time. She stopped to say hello and make some smalltalk about the weather, and then noticed Olly winding himself around my legs. She looked at him and looked at me and you could tell she was thinking about whether to say something or not. Eventually, she decided she would.

"He lives with you now, doesn't he?" She said, smiling.

"Er... Yes," I said, wondering where on earth this was going.

And so she proceeded to tell me the story. "Olly " (formerly Elvis) and his brother, Sam, had lived all their lives with an elderly man on the street named Joe.

"You might have seen him taking the bins out sometimes?" My neighbour, who introduced herself as Clare, enquired - and now she came to mention it, I did recall sometimes seeing an elderly gentleman in his back garden, and that I had not seen him for some while.

"Well, Joe got diagnosed with cancer late last year and deteriorated really quickly," said Clare. "Sadly he died a few months ago, and didn't have any family willing to take the cats, so we took them in."

She proceeded to tell me that this hadn't worked out well at all, because the stress of Joe's death caused Olly's brother to become really aggressive towards him, whilst Olly became depressed and withdrawn and could not understand where his "dad" had gone. Clare told me the marks he was covered with were not, as I had assumed, infected flea bites, but scars from where he'd been tearing at his own skin out of stress and despair.

She said they tried their best to comfort him, but his brother maintained a campaign of aggression towards him, and he started going missing for days at a time. When he stopped coming home at all (around December), they assumed he had died.

"But then," She said. "We saw one of your Christmas cards. Do you put your cat's names in your cards?"

"Er, yes," I said, slightly shamefaced (they're part of the family too!).

"Well," She said. "I know your next-door-neighbour, and she said you'd started putting a new cat's name in the card, and asked me if it could possibly be Elvis. So I started watching your back garden and realised that's where he was - that he'd moved in with you!" She was positively beaming whilst she said this, so I didn't need to worry she was in the least bit annoyed we'd "stolen her cat" - on the contrary, she seemed very pleased indeed.

Right on cue, Olly/Elvis ran up to her and meowed, so she stroked him and admired his coat, commenting we'd "done a really good job with him". She said he would never have been happy in the same household as his aggressive brother, and it was so much better for both of them to have their own "territory". She asked how he got on with Tiger, and I said, although Tiger hadn't been too thrilled at first (to put it mildly - he was in a depressive sulk for about a month), he'd got used to the idea, and they now were quite companionable, sleeping on the bed together and so on.

"Yes, I see them together in your garden," She said. "He'd have never done that with Sam."

She then said to please let her know if we ever need any help with his keep, cat food etc., and I said, thanks very much, but please don't worry about that - he's our cat now.

"Oh, but there is one thing," I said. "We've been really curious - how old is he?"

Because of how small and skinny he was when he arrived, and because of his playfully good temperament, we assumed he was very young, possibly still even a kitten.

"Eleven," Said Clare. So - far from a kitten, but a stately elder!

Clare and I said our goodbyes and I went back inside, where Olly/Elvis leapt up onto the kitchen table and meowed at me.

"You're very sprightly for a gentleman your age," I told him, and stroked him, as he did his ridiculously adorable devotional stare.

It was rather nice to be reminded in this world of complete Covidiocy and general dystopian insanity that there are, nevertheless, still stories with happy endings