How Do They Do It?

I DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND myself, so why should i expect to understand anybody else, particularly a member of a non human species? Specifically, i refer to cats, those enigmatic creatures of fame and folklore.

I don't understand cats, but i vaguely begin to understand why the ancient egyptians worshipped them. Part of it was their irresistable inscutability. The ancient egyptians understoond that people don't own cats, cats own people. They have the godlike powr of ownership.

What puzzles me currently is this: in a small ,typical american town, a litter of kittens is born in a garage, is weened, and claimed by nobody, so the litter become strays, The kittens roam around the average american middle class neighborhood, part of the large local stray cat population.

All the stray cats, day after day, week after week, hang around in the general area, making regular but brief appearances in most everybody's yard. All the cats seem well fed, clean, and healthy, but nobody "owns" (for lack of a better term) them. They live on the streets.

One of the kittens, only a few months old, starts showing up most every day first in my yard, then on my front porch, never getting very close to me, but always there, day after day, week after week, virtually ignored by me, I assuming it'll everntually move on.

But it doesn't move on, it stays, and get a little bit closer to me everyday, closer to my house, and it
stares at me, sending me messages...

of course i eventually adopt it, or it adopts me, after a long process, and then two other kittens from the same litter do they same thing. I call all my friends and tell them, "if i show up with a fourth cat, please stage an intervention".

My question is, how do stray kittens, who have never lived with or been around a human being, and who are only a couple of months old, understand that the way to have a good life is to hook up with a human being?

These young kittens all knew they needed to get me on their side, they refused to let me ingnore them, they were absolutely determined to snag me, they knew i was the perfect mark. But How!!!