Sweep was the runt of a feral litter of seven 12 week-old kittens in the RSPCA shelter. The card on their pen described them as 'semi-wild' - in other words, they had learned to use a litter tray but did not yet understand what humans were for
If approached they bolted or squished themselves together in a big terrified pile; if picked up they hissed and hissed, but never lashed out. We brought Sweep and her sister Parsley home. A few days later Parsley managed to burst out of the kitten carrier in the street right opposite the vet's, and shot off into someone's garden. Although this was very close to where we live, and the gardens all back onto one another, we never managed to find her. Six months later we got a phone call from the vet surgery; Parsley had been taken there after being run over and killed by a car on our own street (she was microchipped).
Tiny little Sweep had become very precious to me through all the guilt and sadness of losing Parsley. She took a few weeks to decide that humans were actually quite useful at opening cat food, and were even quite warm and soft to sleep on. She was a retriever kitten, and whatever she found around the house would be dropped onto my lap for me to play fetch with her. Foam earplugs were the favourite, but balls of foil, pen tops or a screwed up passport photograph of my OH would do as well. She outgrew this game after being spayed and starting to go outside, when she discovered the existence of frogs
I have now become accustomed to seeing abandoned frogs hop out from under the sofa or behind the tv. The only other things she is adept at 'catching' are the apples which fall from next door's tree; every autumn she brings home every one she finds and drops it on the kitchen floor. Her only remaining 'feral' trait is a fear of strangers in the house - when she hears the doorbell she growls and hides under the bed - but she gradually became firm friends with two of the neighbours in their gardens, to the extent that one considers Sweep to be 'half hers'
Sweep will be five years old this May, and she is a funny, quirky delight
