it's pretty common in all of southern europe as well... even, there's a cat that mooches around one of the bar/cafe/minimarket near my old place - he's a stray, but he's pretty much the bar cat... i remember many times in Bulgaria also seeing ladies go out in the early evening with giant cans of food and a swarm of like 20 local strays would all show up for some, in Varna, in Sofia... hell, in the prison, there was a whole colony of cats living nearby who were feeding off the scraps thrown out of the prison kitchen
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i mean, not just cats also, the dogs too... hell, my very first impression of Bulgaria back in early 2013 was in the taxi after getting off the plane everyone in the 4 lane intersection waits, regardless of the signal, for a limping 3 legged dog to cross the intersection... on most suburban main intersections in Sofia there is usually 3-4 strays that get fed by everyone, and i mean everyone, very often there might be a kebab stand and people would throw them pieces and so on and so forth... and the dogs were really chill too, not bad behaved at all
yeah, in the cities in bulgaria, vets volunteer to neuter the strays, you can tell because they all get little plastic ear tags