Every year, I added more news to my website of Catsnip’s progress. As time went by, I received an increasing number of emails from animal lovers visiting Sicily, who had found Catsnip. Several of them were concerned about dogs, too. One of these was Christine:

I was on a cruise, which stopped at the port of Trapani on the west coast of Sicily. We walked through the town and found a small square with shrines let into the walls, presumably to celebrate the fishing industry of the town. Here I saw a large dog lying in the shade without moving and I wondered if it was ill. The thing that struck me particularly was that its claws were excessively overgrown. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Can you help?

I didn’t know how to reply to this – my work so far had been on the eastern side of the island and I had no contacts in Trapani. However, a few days later, I had an email from Susie telling me of her visit with her friend Esther to Cefalù on the northern coast. Here, they had fallen in love with a little grey cat and had fed her. One evening she had brought one of her kittens to them. They wondered who would feed her when the hotel closed. Was it a very complicated process to adopt her and have her in their home? Always a ponderable question, it may seem a kindly act but, as with my experience in Letojanni, sometimes taking a cat away from her territory is not the best thing to do. When I realised what dedicated animal lovers they were, I told them about the Trapani dog and my sense of helplessness.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll find it,’ Susie replied. And they did. Their journey involved an heroic 400-kilometre (248-mile) round trip but, with Christine’s map, they located the dog.

‘He’s a Dalmatian,’ Susie reported. ‘He wagged his tail when we spoke to him. He seems to be known in the area. We’ve called him Tito. I don’t think he’s ill, though the claws do need to be cut.’

What next? I’d begun to create a database of local animal welfare contacts. One of these was the international organisation for the protection of animals, OIPA. Its primary aims, I learned, are to raise awareness of the correct care of animals and defend their rights, including a campaign to help feral animals, oppose hunting and any form of ill treatment. The group also collaborates with people in the medico-veterinary sector to abolish vivisection and promote medical research devoid of the use of animals as laboratory guinea pigs. I contacted Raimonda, local delegate of OIPA for Trapani. When I spoke to her on the phone she told me she had gone several times to look for Tito. She, too, thought he was a neighbourhood dog. After a few weeks she wrote to me telling Tito’s story, except that the dog was a female and her name was now Dina.

Dina was found on the motorway in 2003 with an exposed fracture to her back leg and was taken to the Trapani Dog Shelter. Several weeks passed before she was operated on. Because of this delay, at the time of the operation the bone was already set, provoking another fracture, and it was necessary to use a metal rod to align the leg. The operation didn’t go very well because the bone was already fragile and for this reason it set badly. It was thought she would be liberated into the neighbouring territory, but then found preferable to put her in the shopping zone as a neighbourhood dog, considering her difficulty in walking and that here she would be loved, fed and cared for by all the residents. A young woman treated her with anti-flea and tick medicine and she explained to everyone the dog’s state of health.

After a few months, when she was sleeping under one of the parked cars, she sustained another injury. Fortunately, this time there was only bleeding and bruising, nothing serious and she was treated with antibiotics and medication on the spot. About four years ago, she was put back in the dog shelter because some fishermen noticed she had sores as a result of her considerable body fat. Dina was generally not very mobile. Everyone was feeding her so there was always available food under her nose and she didn’t need to make any effort. Taken to the vet, he found she had developed a heart problem and he said she must slim down. She passed the summer in the dog shelter, where she was treated and stabilised then taken back to her place, where she was welcomed with affection.

Dina lived with two other friends, one called Neve who is still there, and another, Little Dog Moon, who in 2010 was skewered through the throat by the spear of a gate in a shop door. Having witnessed the death of her playmate, Dina is now isolated and hardly comes through the gate. For ten years she has lived by the sea and, for a dog, ten years is almost an entire lifetime.

‘Some people in Verona would like to donate a kennel for Dina and one for Neve. I have to speak to the town hall to ask authorisation and to position and fix them in place because someone might steal them. I hope to give you some positive news soon,’ Raimonda concluded.

Paolina found me on Facebook and wrote to tell me about her work with dogs: ‘I’d been working in Germany for a number of years and when I returned to Italy I was shocked by what I saw. I found myself confronting an extremely cruel reality – animals considered to be nothing, maltreated, poisoned, slaughtered and abused. This was the order of the day; also there were many starving dogs. In order to help them I have committed all my belongings, reducing myself to poverty, and obtained, as well, a marginalisation on the part of my countrymen. Because of this, my aim is to achieve a secure location where I can keep the dogs, make sure they have enough to eat, care for them and find good adoptive homes.’

Over the next few months she described the fight to achieve her dream. The family owned a piece of land but she needed to raise enough funds to satisfy the authorities it would be built according to their regulations. At the same time, she waged a daily battle against hostile neighbours and animal cruelty.

‘I scarcely sleep,’ she told me. ‘At night I go to the outlying farms where there are starving dogs. And I am forever finding injured animals and female dogs, which have just given birth. Sometimes I feel so tired I don’t know how I can go on.’

In spite of all these difficulties, Paolina has built her refuge, thanks to the generous donations I was able to send to her.

Animal rights is the last bastion of morality; there are still so many people who do not recognise these creatures are sentient beings, just like us. The only difference is that they cannot speak our language. And because they can’t speak for themselves they undergo all kinds of cruelty and exploitation. We have to be grateful to those students of animal behaviour who are accepting that animals are feeling and thinking beings with complex emotional lives. They feel joy, love, pain, fear, anxiety, sorrow; they demonstrate humour too. The range of animal sentience that is now being recognised is astounding – rats who chuckle when being tickled and come back for more, turkeys who are so clever that they have been known to hold up heavy traffic in order to let their babies cross the road. Parrots are a whole amazing story in themselves: they have the emotional age of a toddler and the intelligence of a five-year-old child. They bond so deeply with either their parrot or human companions that parting and separation cause them great suffering, so much so that they have been known to stop eating and die as a result of this.

Mother Theresa of Dogs was a badly abused and neglected greyhound locked up and left to die. She was finally rescued and taken to an animal sanctuary, emaciated and shivering with fear. However, as time went by, she grew in confidence with the love and care she received and has ended up becoming the sanctuary’s resident surrogate mother. She welcomes all the new arrivals, providing them with the love and care their bruised souls so badly need.

I have always loved animals, especially the cat, this divine creature: a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs and patronises human beings. Latest statistics from the Pet Population Report show that there are 8 million of them in British households – 17 per cent of the population shares its family with a cat. Worshipped or reviled in the past, there is no doubt about it: felines reign over many of today’s households.

They have even usurped the selfie and taken command of the Internet, where photos and videos are concerned, according to research conducted by network Three. There is also a trend towards Social Petworking – with over 350,000 cat owners creating social media accounts for their feline.

A fifth of those who created an account for their cat said they’d done so because they felt their pet was more interesting than themselves, and 15 per cent share content in the hope their animal will become a viral superstar.

I have certainly noticed the increase in sharing funny or cute pet pictures online. Recently, I became addicted to the cartoon feline Simon. Thinking about it, however, I wonder what the object of all this attention feels about it. While dogs are natural comedians, tongues lolling, they often seem to be inviting us to join in the joke; cats take themselves far more seriously. Theirs is a natural dignity and grace. If, for example, Sheba botches a leap from floor to counter top when I am opening her food, she seems to expect me to behave as if it hadn’t happened. Call this my imagination, if you like, but no cat of my acquaintance enjoys being made to look ridiculous.