not our cat!

we decided to go for a walk down to the creek this evening. we opened the front door to find ray curled up on the piece of carpet door mat we have (she does this sometimes-- our landlords live next door and don't want us to get any pets. i wonder how many times they've seen her sitting there). we gave her a cuddle and then set her down and started walking down the street. she followed us. we walked a little bit further and crossed a street. she was still following us. we walked a bit further. she was still there. by this point she'd passed where we think her house is. we walked until the street curved a bit. she was still behind us. once we went around the curve we kept checking but we couldn't see her. we walked up the creek a ways and then came down another street to loop back home. when we got back to our street we looked and ray was sitting on the footpath waiting for us near the curve in the road. we started laughing. ray looked and saw us behind her and started walking back towards us. the whole thing was a bit weird cuz first of all-- she's not our cat! second-- she's a cat, not a dog. cat's don't follow people, that's what dogs do.
it was even weirder when after we got home, we decided to walk to the shops. we walked down a side street and a funny little kitten-looking cat was looking at us from its yard. then it got up and started coming towards us. it squeezed through the front fence and started following us down the path-- this cat had never even seen us before! its people were outside and an older woman started telling us that that was 1 of 5 cats she has (it was the mother cat-- it looked like a baby). then a boy came and carried the cat back into the yard. we had another cat further up the road come out after us too. its kinda weird all these cats acting like they know us or something. i guess animals can tell good people when they see them 8)