Helen, which area of the island did you go to? I always stay in Kefalos and believe me they have A LOT of cats in that area
As I said in my first post I love Kos and the people but I find the situation with the cats extremely hard. Last year I found a kitten that couldn't have been more than 8 weeks old. It was at the side of the road absolutely terrified and quite obviously crying for it's mum. There was no sign of mum so I don't know if she was off looking for food or something had happened to her. The kitten eventually made a dash across the road and disappeared but the memory of that poor little mite has stayed with me.
It's not all doom and gloom as the place where we were staying was run by a very nice family who had a female cat with four kittens living at the back of the apartments. The family fed the mother and they were happy for any of the guests to give the mum and kittens food ~ some of the locals are not happy with people doing this. Before I left I did try to persuade the family to take the mother cat to the vets to be spayed but I think it fell on deaf ears