On the subject of the gattare, the sometimes mocked women who care for a number of cats, it certainly seems true there is a strong bond between the two. We go back a long way and have a lot in common, but perhaps the biggest thing we share is our history of being persecuted by the Church. After all we’ve been through, we have every reason to stick by each other.

In evolutionary terms the cat family is fairly modern, being only 3–5 million years old. They were domesticated, if you can ever say a cat is truly domesticated, by the Egyptians and considered, among other wild animals, to be the representatives on earth of gods and goddesses. One city in the Nile Delta had as its chief deity a woman with the head of a lioness called Bastet. She was attributed to sexual energy, fertility and child nurturing and her cult spread to other parts of Egypt. A wild and raunchy Bastet festival was held in April and May, attended by as many as 700,000 people and who knows how many cats. Ferals came to possess a special protected status in Egypt and it was a capital offence to kill one, even by accident.

But the fortunes of felines had changed radically by the late Middle Ages. From being lauded as symbols of motherhood, they were dubbed agents of the Devil and the companions of witches. Feline phobia reigned. This was largely because the established Church wanted to stamp out all traces of pagan religions and cults. From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, both women and cats were persecuted for their so-called involvement in witchcraft. A solitary female who believed in natural remedies and had as her sole companion an amiable puss cat would be denounced by suspicious neighbours and hauled before a court. There are stories of animals being put on trial, too.

Along with this hatred of cats came an element of hatred of women, in particular the link between female sexuality and the sexual habits of female cats. The very quality of fertility admired by the ancient Egyptians was to be condemned and stamped out by the early Christian Church.

In these so-called enlightened times it is awful to imagine a single and perhaps lonely woman with her cat companion judged and horribly put to death. But then perhaps things have not changed to such a large degree when I think of Maria, whose neighbours spited her in every way they could and gossiped about her strangeness just because of her love of cats.

I longed to talk to someone about the death of Lizzie and the rest of her colony. There were so many questions I needed to ask. The person who could best answer them was Antonella and yet I kept putting off that bus journey to Castelmola. A few days before I was due to return to England, I couldn’t procrastinate any longer. When the bus drew into the park, I hesitated again, feeling anxious, afraid of what I was going to hear. In Castelmola, I set off down the streets and for a moment lost my way until I saw the now familiar slope downwards to Via Canone. It was strangely deserted with not a sign of a cat but for Lizzie’s mother and another small feline. Several times I rang on Antonella’s bell but there was no reply. I was beginning to think I would have to leave a note when I heard footsteps and saw her approaching. She was delighted to see me.

‘How did it happen?’ I asked the question I’d asked myself so many times.

‘I received your postcards,’ Antonella said. ‘When the first arrived she was always on the street and doing well with a hint of a limp. I had planned to send you a photograph but then she disappeared.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘It must have been in July.’

July! All those weeks I had felt happy that Lizzie was living a good life when, in fact, she was dead.

‘The first cat was found lying in the street near that old house and afterwards in various parts of Castelmola. They had a curious appearance as if they were made of stone. When I heard what had happened, I ran around looking for your cat but I couldn’t find her. I have never been able to find her.’

So the mystery remained of what happened to Lizzie. Had she escaped the poisoning? Or had she run off to hide and die a miserable death?

‘I kept on expecting her to turn up,’ Antonella continued, ‘but she never has.’

She took me to a piece of wasteland, where two of the cats she fed were playing. ‘It is so easy to wrap the poison in a bit of meat and throw it down here, no one would know who it was who had done it. The world is a horrible place and sensitive people like us have to suffer so much – we have to take on the sins of the world.’

I remembered the crucifix in her house. ‘It is hard to be sensitive,’ I noted.

Then Antonella confided: ‘I have some idea who has done this but I cannot report them because I don’t have proof. However, there was this woman who complained about the mess the cats made round her house and then two days later they were dead.’

I could see she didn’t want me to leave, enjoying the company of another human being who felt as she did. We kissed and hugged, and I said I would come again. As the bus drew away, I stared out of the window, shocked and upset. I had believed Lizzie was in good hands but, as Antonella said, no one would have guessed that is what these people could do.

It was a sad journey down to Taormina.