Meow bella!
Metafilter user lemuring dug up a fascinating old Animal Planet special, evidently from back in the days when Animal Planet ran documentary shows about animals (instead of their current line-up of endless animal-related reality shows). "City of the Wildcats" follows a colony of cats that lives in the ruins of Trajan's Forum in Rome. You can watch it on Youtube in two parts, each about ten minutes long: Part 1, Part 2.
We often see feral cats in passing, but we rarely get to see very far into their lives. I have a friend who feeds a trio of feral cats at his home in the country; we know almost nothing about them. Cats are so secretive, and so seemingly commonplace, but this documentary is proof that their lives are incredibly fascinating.
People usually think of cats as being solitary animals with defined territories, but feral cats more often tend to live in colonies. A colony is organized something like a lion's tribe, but is less cohesive.
This particular colony has one ruling male (dubbed Caesar), a young up-and-comer (Brutus), and a host of lesser males who sneak in when one of the females goes into heat. There is one queen (Livia) and her daughter, Mina. All of the cats occupy the same general territory, although they may only interact with each other a few times a day.
The biggest surprise for me in watching this documentary was to see the lengths the males would go to in order to avoid violence, while competing for a female in heat. We think of tomcats as being endlessly battling, fighting for food and territory and females. But Caesar and Brutus settle most of their fights by glaring at each other and butting heads in slow motion, a sort of kitty cat Kabuki theater.
(I was also bemused by how well-dressed and chic the documentary's obligatory "crazy cat lady" was. How many Americans would step out to feed a colony of feral cats in heels, slacks, and a lovely off-the-shoulder cabled sweater? I definitely felt under-dressed by comparison.)
Life is difficult for feral cats, as the documentary amply demonstrates. Here in the States we have "TNR," a protocol where the cats are trapped, neutered, and then returned to their home turf. Rome takes a more tolerant attitude towards its ferals, apparently, with over 2,000 colonies in the city.
Then again, seeing how many pigeons the feral cats killed, I started wondering if Seattle shouldn't promote more feral cats to our streets!