Hi - thanks for your reply. Good to know we are not the only ones! I did contact the Cats protection league and they offered me a voucher to pick up a trap at a local vets so it could be taken in and speyed, but to be honest i don't have the time to do this and even if it was speyed it wouldn't stop it being hungry, which it clearly is. I will talk to Celia Hammond though to see if i can trap it and take it into them, but i'm slightly worried that it might actually be someone's cat - though i'm nearly past caring about whether this is the case. I do feel sorry for the poor thing - particularly in this freezing weather. it might be better off at Celia Hammonds.