Have five cats here too. The first cat moved in on her own, came through the dog door back when we had four dogs, and decided she'd live with us. She broke the 'cat barrier' for my woman, who had never had a good experience with cats before, and after that, we kept adding cats as the dogs died. Four is the legal limit here, but we have five anyway, just couldn't resist this little orange tabby stray that turned into the fifth.

When I was living in Turkey, there were thousands of cats, just everywhere. They have this myth that Ataturk (national hero) has his spirit in a cat's body and someday someone will accidentally step on a cat, get scratched, and the spirit of Ataturk will be transferred to that person's body. So, they don't exactly REVERE cats, or treat them particularly well, but they don't MIStreat them either.

They also have a bad rabies problem in Turkey. I ended up getting bitten by a rabid cat there (I was drunk and thought he was purring at me, when he was actually growling). The Army gave me a then-experimental rabies shot that they said would make me immune for at least 20 years, if not life. After that, anytime there was a rabid cat rampaging around any U.S. military area in or around Izmir, they called me, since I was immune. Hah, joined the Army to do electronics work, ended up spending a fair amount of time as a cat catcher!