THE HOLIDAY ROMANCES WITH A TWIST IN THE TAIL

Why going abroad might just see you falling in love... but not in the way you might expect. One writer reports on the rise of British tourists feeding or even adopting adorable street cats

- By John Sturgis

EVERY summer millions of Britons who go overseas on holiday will fall in love. We're not talking about conventional holiday romances though, but of striking up a bond with a street cat. Although our feline population is largely domesticated, chipped and fed twice a day, in other countries they may not be so well looked after.

Many places popular with holidaying Britons have large numbers of cats which are variously underfed, over-fertile, stray or fully feral. From Greece to Morocco, Tunisia to Turkey, the streets of tourist areas are often teeming with them. But despite their often difficult lives, these affection-starved cats can be easy to fall for and some may feel the need to help or even to bring one home — I include myself as one of them.

The Bardo museum in Tunis is an oasis of calm in a hot and hectic city: a 400-year-old palace with large, airy marble-clad rooms housing one of the best collections of Roman mosaics and other classical antiquities in the world. It’s the last place you'd expect to find a prospective pet.

But that’s what happened during our recent trip to the city.

We found an outdoor cafe in the museum complex where we took a break from exploring the 2,000-year-old ruins of Carthage. We had just ordered coffee when a particularly charming cat strolled up. He was white with tabby patches, a little scrawny by UK standards, but very friendly.

I didn’t even need to bribe him with food before he was preening in my lap to be stroked. And after half an hour of this, we were like old friends.

He was simply adorable. And even though we have already accumulated three cats at our London home, I found myself seriously considering the possibility of bringing him home. The only thing that stopped me, in fact, was there simply wasn’t time to arrange this before our booked flight home.