This, dear friends, is a photo of Lydia — one of the two stray cats I feed in my backyard. I took this picture just a few days ago and last fed her just a few minutes ago.
I've been feeding Lydia for more than ten years now. This may seem long for a feral feline but apparently, there's no such thing as an "average" lifespan for a stray because their living conditions vary so widely, depending on how many other animals (including other cats) are in their vicinity and whether they find steady food supplies and places of shelter in bad weather. Lydia seems to be doing well.
Back in 2008 as some of you may remember, Lydia went and got herself pregnant. As advised by experts on this kind of thing, I trapped her and took her in for a kitty abortion and the surgery that would ensure she never got that way again. That was an adventure which took several days and I posted the whole thing as a running diary on this site. I've had a number of requests to isolate those posts and to format them for easy reading. So on this page, you can read the whole story. You'll also hear how she got her name and how I felt an odd kinship with Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five-O.