Just to clarify, the cat that died was my oldest (12 1/2). I first
mentioned her dying in dgt's thread about her cat not eating.

There could be a connection between the stray tomcat and her
death, though, because the FeLV+ tomcat had been coming
around for a few weeks before I took him to the vet and found
out that he had FeLV. There was no possibility that any of
my cats had been infected by a food dish, because they
would not touch anything the tomcat had touched. They had even
been staying out of the house because he went in the house.
That's always been the way my cats act about an intruding
stray.

But they did drink out of their water dishes, and he had drunk
out of them too. Apparently he doesn't leave his scent on a
water dish. So, I wondered if my oldest cat could have caught
FeLV from the water dish before I ever took the stray to the vet,
and died so soon of it. That was why I started the thread about
FeLV being contagious, and one of my questions there was
about how soon a cat could die if infected by FeLV.