The heat intensified. Throughout that July of 2003, I visited the various cat colonies in the town. I had two aims: to treat cats with antibiotics and, more specifically, an eye cream for a particularly vicious ailment that, left untreated, results in the cats going blind, and to make friends with the gattare, those wonderful cat ladies who take it upon themselves to feed a colony of cats. In this way I met Genoveffa.

Towards the end of the Corso, gazing out towards Etna, is the pastel pink building of Pensione Adele with its white balustrades; it always reminded me of a huge pink and white iced cake. Once a palazzo, it had been turned into a hotel. In a courtyard at the back I had seen a small colony of cats. Now it was time to meet their gattara.

I rang on the bell and the door clicked open, letting me into a cavernous hallway at the foot of a wide, curving staircase. As I looked upwards, I saw Genoveffa’s smiling face gazing down at me.

‘Come on up!’

The high-ceilinged breakfast room was furnished with the traditional Sicilian furniture and chandeliers.

‘Vuole un caffe?’

‘Thank you, but…’

‘I know!’ Genoveffa nodded and smiled. ‘I’ll make you a cappuccino. I have so many foreigners here, every year – I should know their tastes by now.’

I sat down in an armchair and, leaning my head against the lace-edged antimacassar, I told Genoveffa about my plans for the future. As long as I could find somewhere to operate, I intended to return the following year for another neutering session to try to control the feral cat population.

Genoveffa might have been small and slight but I found in this woman a passionate supporter of cats, angered by the attitude of people in the neighbourhood. She welcomed my plan and thanked me for trying to help.

‘Come and meet my cats.’

We went through to the storeroom, where there was a big stack of cat food, and then out into the yard to see her colony. They were a strange little group: one with half a tail, another who limped – victims of the cars that swung into the parking space behind the hotel, drivers caring only to find a space. I mentioned to one or two of them they should be careful but they just shrugged. Genoveffa spoke to the cats by name and they rubbed themselves against her legs. She told me about the object she found that she thought was meat wrapped in newspaper only to discover to her horror it was a dead cat.

‘They have no heart,’ she said.

Pensione Adele was founded in 1957 by the Cascio family, around the time of the golden age of mass tourism. A different breed of visitor began to arrive in Taormina, where once wealthy independent travellers had spent the winter months. The Adele offered clean, spacious rooms and warm hospitality at a reasonable price.

Over the next few years I often visited Genoveffa. She was always an oasis of kindness and understanding while I struggled to help the cats.