Well, this poster certainly stirred up the beehive!
We had two adorable dogs (Norwegian Elkhounds) who unfortunately passed away several years ago.
We have now three cats. One is (jokingly) our “illegal Canadian immigrant”.
(When my step daughter got married, she found out her Canadian husband was allergic to cats... thus, we inherited the cat.)
The other two were born under our house. The sister was a good-looking tabby, so I went out, caught the cat, and brought it inside.
Her brother was a street cat, who was not part of all this.
Anyway, a year or so later I would be sitting on the front porch and I saw the brother circling around the porch... closer and closer every night.
One night, he came up on the porch, sat down, looked up at me, and “said”:
“OK, what do we do now”?
I guess we adopted the sister, and the brother adopted us!
I walked inside, and he followed me and has been here ever since.
Yes, they most certainly are independent (as we know from breaking up “cat fights” from time to time).
I still like to point out to people that:
“Dogs have masters...
Cats have staff”
Rudyard Kipling has a fun short story about this.