Sooty makes a clean sweep

When I was a toddler my mother hand-reared the runt of the litter when a stray cat gave birth in my grandfather’s shed. Sooty, as we named him, was jet black, scrawny and fitted in the palm of my mother’s hand but he grew up to rule the neighbourhood, no wandering cats stood a chance in our garden.

He was an excellent mouser and was proud of his catch. Many mornings (frequently before 6am) he would wake us by meowing loudly on the door step where he would beautifully present usually three or four mice laid out next to each other. Sooty would have neatly laid their heads in a row, each would have the kidneys and tail (always in that order) placed just below. He ate the rest! Thankfully birds were not usually brought home. Not all of the birds Sooty caught faired so badly, my mother successfully nursed a few back to health and a welcome release to the safety of the branches.

There were one or two catches no one predicted. When Sooty broke into my hamster’s cage he respectfully did not ‘present’ that in the manner he reserved for wild mice. Trace evidence only, no body was ever found. We also had many guinea pigs when I was a child and for a while I had some in a hutch in my bedroom. When one died whilst I was at school mum and dad decided to purchase an identical ‘replacement’ in the hope that I would not notice. On returning home they placed the high sided cardboard box containing the impostor on the kitchen table, safe enough since our animals never, ever, climbed on the furniture. They turned their backs for a split second; dad felt something brush his leg and mum turned to witness Sooty running down the garden path with my guinea pig swaying lifeless between his front paws. Another trip to the pet shop for impostor number two.


I only ever saw my mother get angry with him twice in seventeen years. The first time Sooty must have been around eight years old. It was spring time and he had caught a young starling that mum managed to wrestle off of him. She wrapped it in a tea towel, put it in a shoe box, cleaned it’s wounds (which turned out to be superficial) and nursed it back to health. After a week it was looking well enough to be released. Dad got involved and the three of us checked the garden for Sooty and our other two cats and deciding it was safe we brought out the now quite feisty fledgling ready for liberation. Dad stood at the highest end of the garden, I was in the middle and mum at the other end. He held the bird up in his open hands but instead of flying into the blue yonder it crash landed in the begonia bush… which was concealing Sooty. He pounced on the poor thing before we could react, turned and ran into a neighbours garden. Mum swore at him quite a bit that day.

The second time was the most memorable. My mother liked to experiment with food but her efforts were always more toxic than tantalising so she would often be cooking for one. One sunny day she had gotten a recipe from a friend of hers but as usual she had customised it. She was marinating half a chicken in all sorts of sweet, sickly smelling spices and sauces, she raved all day about this wonderful meal my father and I were going to ‘miss out’ on. When she spoke of the marinating chicken her eyes were glazing over and she was almost salivating, mum loves her food. It had to marinate for hours and cook very slowly, this was an all day commitment and she was very excited about her up coming feast for the taste buds. Sooty was maintaining his usual routine for a sunny day, sun bathing until his black coat ‘rusted’ then in to the cool kitchen for a sip of water and a kip on his chair. By early evening the marinated feast was almost ready, mum had her plate poised with boiled potatoes and over cooked sloppy vegetables (cooking really was not her forte) all waiting for the chicken. She announced the moment to dad and I, letting us know that we were really missing something by refusing her chicken and she opened the oven… Sooty had obviously been paying more attention to her than we had. In a flash, as she turned to get an oven glove, he leapt into the oven (must have burnt his paws) snatched the chicken in his mouth and ran. He was halfway up our plum tree before she realised. She chased him, shaking her fist and calling him all sorts. Sooty, unperturbed, stretched out on a wide branch and scoffed mum’s dinner. He was obviously made of stronger stuff than we were.
Lisa Creamer friend of www.petwonders.co.uk