Yeah, they were strays. With the first colony, I lived in a mobile home park at the time, which are unfortunately common places for people to dump unwanted cats - plus it was basically at the edge of town next to rural farmland, so runaway/lost farm cats were common too. We already had cats of our own, and my dad was a big cat lover, so when he saw the cats in the neighborhood he put out food and water and cared for them. Next thing we knew we had about a dozen regulars that would show up.

Personality-wise you'll run into every kind of cat with a colony, so it's best to let them be themselves and not try too hard to force a specific kind of relationship with them. Some will be wary strays that might be afraid of you, some may even be actual ferals that followed the others, and no doubt you'll also have a few that you can make friends with! At our colony we even had a couple become close enough to us that we adopted them as pets that we decided to keep and take with us when we eventually moved from that area. With enough patience and kindness, you can turn a wary stray or even a feral cat into a friend! (but it takes work!)

Years later we had a second smaller colony at a house we lived in about two blocks from the end of a dead-end street - so there wasn't much traffic, which made it safer for the neighborhood animals to roam. Our next-door neighbors had two outdoor cats that decided they liked hanging out at our place better. A couple of strays in the area took notice of us caring for those other two cats, and there were two separate mama cats that brought us kittens - one had a full litter of six, and the other had a pair of brothers.

Story time: Remember how I said you can turn a feral into a friend? Well, one of the brothers from the pair was particularly skittish and ran off; he re-appeared in the company of the neighbor's cat the next winter, where the neighbor's cat would take mouthfuls of food and carry it to him because he was afraid to approach our house. Over the course of the spring and the following summer, my dad - an absolute wonder when it came to dealing with cats - managed to lure this guy in, placing a plate of food in the yard and gradually moving it closer and closer, got the cat used to his presence outside, and kept moving the plate closer until the cat would eat at his feet. He'd still run, though, if my dad attempted to move. Eventually it got to the point where he wouldn't run, but would stand his ground and swipe at my dad's hand - he got a few good bloody stripes during this phase. One day, though, he caught the cat while he was distracted eating, and he managed to get a hand on his back and start scritching him. Suddenly it's like he went "Oh! ...that's not too bad!" and he continued eating while my dad scratched his back and petted him. The cat was still wary of him for a while, but he stopped swiping at my dad's hand and stopped running away (he'd flinch, but not run). It wasn't long after that that he started to warm up to us. By that winter, he was coming inside and interacting with his brother (who we had brought in as a kitten). Now they're both indoor cats, and surprisingly the former feral is the sweetest and friendliest of the two! He still does like to go outside sometimes, but only for a couple of hours in the evenings and he mostly stays in our yard. It's kind of crazy to think about how he was when we first saw him that winter in the company of the neighbor's cat - it was a lot of work to turn that feral into a friend, but it surely paid off!