Black as coal.

The first male cat we took in was Sooty (Fuliggine in Italian).  His mother like him as black as coal, was a stray with real attitude.  Fiercely independent, or maybe just plain fierce, she made a point of regularly beating up any other cat on or near my windowsill.  Even Prish Mish (still with us in those days) was afraid of her and so in the end I would shush the stray away from our house and feed her by an allotment on the other side of the road.  After that she usually stayed away from the house but one day I came home and saw her on the garden path at the same time she saw me.  She streaked off across the road to avoid me (she was never tamed) and to my horror got caught under the wheels of a huge SUV.  She died horribly in front of me and there was absolutely nothing I could do to save her.  I was appalled, not only at her terrible death, but also because I knew she had had a litter recently and I had no idea where the kittens were. I phoned Vito in hysterics, and he promised to help me look for them as soon as he got home. Shortly after my doorbell rang and I found the young couple that had recently moved in two doors away at my gate.

“Signora, the black cat is dead.  We saw her in the street” (I’d left her body for Vito to clear when he got home as I couldn’t face it).

“I know, I saw it happen”

“But the kittens will die” the girl said to me.

“I know, but I don’t where they are”

“We do, they’re in our garden but we don’t know what to do”. 

“Where?”

She bade me follow her into her garden, and there under a bush shrinking back in a small furry mass were four tiny kittens.  Two grey and two black. 

Sooty and his siblings

 At first we (my new neighbours and I shared the work) had to hand feed them with a syringe and special formula milk but within a short time they were eating proper food and generally behaving like kittens do. They were all tiny, but Sooty was miniscule and definitely the runt of the litter.

Sooty was miniscule

His tail was deformed

His tail was deformed, perhaps because of a difficult birth but whatever the cause, it’s shorter than most cats and has a fixed crook in the middle and ends with a stump.  At first he wouldn’t take food and seemed to be losing his will to live as can sometimes happen with orphaned kittens. He turned away from any milk we tried to give him until in desperation I literally jammed the syringe down his throat, and squeezed the liquid in.   I remember his eyes opening wide in surprise.

“I’m not letting you die, ” I told him firmly.

Either he took some notice, or more likely he just felt better with some food inside him, but from then on he went from strength to strength.  He was never greedy though and as his siblings fought for their space round the plate of food, he would take a little nibble and then hoist himself up my leg with his needle claws, look at me seriously with his bright blue eyes 

He'd look at me seriously with his bright blue eyes

and then curl up and fall asleep on my lap.  I began to dread the day I would have to give him away. Then one day Vito said to me

“You’d like to keep him wouldn’t you?”

I nodded. 

“Okay”.

So that’s how we got Sooty. 

He and the Beast are firm friends

 He grew up to be a beautiful and enormous cat, so jet-black that it’s difficult to see his features in any photograph. He and my beast are firm friends and he's fond of "er upstairs" too, although fights often with Chili.  He is much like his mother in that he is fiercely independent and has attitude, and like all the other cats I’ve ever had he tends to use us as a hotel too.    

He grew up to be a beautiful cat

Then just as I begin to think he’s forgotten those early days when he would sleep under my chin and gently gnaw my skin as though he was returning my kisses, he’ll surprise me. Jumping up on the bed he'll brush his face against mine and curl up beside me purring like an engine until he falls asleep beside me.  As for his siblings, our neighbours kept his grey sister so we still see her, and the other two went to very good homes J

Sooty, December 5th 2013