Feeding & Nutrition

The note was pinned to the shed door in a shaky hand. 'The grey and the tabby get fed at six, the little black one is shy, please don't let the ginger one eat theirs.' I'd only taken on the allotment that spring, and suddenly I was the keeper of four cats I'd never met.

The old lady, Mrs Hale, had been doing this for eleven years. Every evening she'd walk the long path with a carrier bag of biscuits and a flask of water, and the cats would appear as if summoned. When her daughter rang to say she'd gone into a home, she asked, almost as an afterthought, if I'd mind. I said yes before I understood what I'd agreed to.

Feeding a colony is nothing like feeding a pet. There's a hierarchy you learn by watching. The grey, who turned out to be a neutered tom with half an ear, eats first and guards. The tabby is second. The black one watches from the compost heap and only approaches once the others leave. The ginger is the chaos agent, the one who bolts in and scatters the lot.

I bought a twenty-kilo sack of the cheapest dry food the pet shop had, which Mrs Hale's daughter said was what she used, and two heavy ceramic bowls that wouldn't blow over in the March wind. Water froze in the flask that first cold week, so I started bringing a fresh bottle and emptying it there, then taking the empty home. It became a ritual, the six o'clock walk with the bag.

The shy black cat took three weeks to eat in front of me. I'd set the bowls down, step back to the gate, and wait. At first she'd vanish the moment I moved. Then she'd creep closer while I stood still. Eventually she ate with me ten feet away, and one evening she let me crouch. That was the day I stopped feeling like an intruder on someone else's duty.

There were problems I hadn't anticipated. The ginger cat dragged food into the neighbouring plot and the man there, who grows prize leeks, started leaving traps that weren't traps, just upturned buckets. I apologised and started feeding the ginger separately, in a corner it couldn't escape from, which mostly worked. Mostly.

A local rescue heard about it through the allotment WhatsApp and offered to neuter the young ones for free, which Mrs Hale's daughter paid for. I trapped the ginger first, because he was the easiest to corner, and felt absurdly proud when I dropped him at the clinic and collected a quieter, lighter version two days later.

Now it's summer. The colony is healthy, the leek man and I nod at each other, and I've stopped counting it as a chore. Mrs Hale's daughter brings her mum on good weekends, and the old lady sits on the bench and watches them eat and says, softly, that they remember her. I think they do. Cats know who feeds them, even when the hands have changed.

I'll keep the six o'clock walk going. It's the least I can do for a duty someone handed me, and honestly, the quiet of the allotment at that hour, with four pairs of eyes watching the carrier bag, is the most peaceful part of my day.

Winter was the real test. The water in the bowls iced over on the coldest mornings, and I started bringing warm water in an insulated flask, pouring it just before they arrived so it wouldn't freeze before they drank. The grey tom, who by then trusted me enough to eat with me standing two feet away, would wait by the shed while I broke the ice with the heel of my boot. It felt less like charity by then and more like an appointment we'd both agreed to keep.

A fifth cat appeared in November, a thin ginger-and-white thing with one eye, and the colony's politics shifted overnight. The established four gave her the cold shoulder for a fortnight, eating in turns, her last, until hunger and the cold wore the grey tom's patience down and he let her share. I fed her separately for a while, then let her merge. She's still the last to arrive and the first to flee, but she's here, and that's the point.

Mrs Hale's daughter brings her mother every other Sunday when the weather holds. The old lady sits on the bench in her coat, the cats weave between her ankles, and she tells me which one is which, though I've long since learned. She says the colony looks better than when she ran it, which I know isn't true, but I let her have it. She earned the lie.

The cost is real but small. A sack of food lasts a month between four, sometimes five, mouths, the bowls were a tenner, and the time is the only thing that hurts, the six o'clock walk in the rain when I'd rather be inside. But I think of the note on the shed door, and the shaky hand that wrote it, and I go. Some duties you inherit rather than choose, and they turn out to be the ones that matter.