small, fungible entities of no distinguishing individual identity

Aside from not commenting on the abysmal ignorance Keiva displays by lumping cats in this class I would question this word cattery. At first I thought, hmm, stales, mus' is a piece of Ozzery; but, no; a couple of US'ns jump in and blithely talk about it as though it were a perfectly reasonable question to ask so I ask myself, "Is this some word that even I, with my wide experience in linguistic foibles, have somehow managed not to have been exposed to?" I leave it to the rest of y'all; Is there even such a word in Oz or is our good stales attempting to pull a fast one over on us that only a Fool would catch?