Even a die-hard dog person will empathize with Cat City (Friday, 8 p.m. on Global). It's an hour-long documentary that uncovers the dirty, ungroomed truth about Toronto's feral cat population. According the film, 10,000 lost or abandoned cats live on the street, creating colonies everywhere from the nooks and crannies of Scarborough's Bluffers Park to the forgotten corners of a city yacht club. Those sad-looking kitties tug at your heartstrings, but it's the tender-hearted humans who do their damnedest to feed and care for the cats that really warm your heart. Unfortunately, these cat lovers seem more vulnerable than the strays they work so hard to save. Caregivers like 79-year-old Joyce Smith, whose Second Chance shelter housed 200 alley cats, and housed the overflow (100 animals) in her own home. Toronto Cat Rescue president Ferne Sinkins says she's burned out five times already, but can't leave her position because there's no one to take over. We go on several rescue missions with her, and listen to animal experts across the country advocate government-sponsored spaying and neutering. That may not be a bad idea: After learning how quickly cats can reproduce, you realize it really is a cat's world, we just live in it.
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More documentary
Into the Pride (Monday, 9 p.m., Animal Planet) More cats - but they're big cats. Canadian zoologist Dave Salmoni is like the Survivorman of the lion kingdom. In this hour, he heads to a game park in Namibia to live alone for six months. His assignment is to try and rehabilitate a pride of lions that are attacking humans - it's not good for the eco-tourism business. The footage is incredible: This "big cat whisperer" walks up to the wild animals with just a shepherd's crook, and when they charge at him, he starts yelling at them, "That's enough out of you!" It has to be seen to be believed.