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01 June 1998
Midsummer whisky with animals
By Robin Laing

On a midsummer holiday to Islay three years ago, we picked up a bottle of Bowmore 17 year old from the distillery. It was to be one of those rare weeks when clouds never invade the sky.

We arose one morning, even before the thinnest crack of dawn and set off from Kilchoman to climb a hill in semidarkness, eager to see the midsummer sunrise. Exquisite peaches, purples, pale blues and greens rewarded our effort. A dram of the sweet, dark nectar warmed us in every way while we waited for and then watched the sun rise. Whisky before breakfast! As the light improved we realised we were in the close company of two magnificent wild mountain billy goats who were just beginning to stir. Their faces were clearly visible and enormously impressive; their long beards and high horns giving the look of serious masks. We saluted them with a silent 'Slainte Mhath' and left them undisturbed.

This year, at midsummer, we were back from a wedding, settling down for a nightcap of 17 year old Bowmore, (not the same bottle!), when we received an insistent invitation from our neighbours to join their patio party. We ended. up spending the whole of that short night in conversation and song on their patio, assisted of course by the Bowmore. Our neighbours have a colony of bats in their attic, and the whole night through these creatures entertained us with ariel acrobatics and squeaks as they wheeled around over our heads. Dawn came and bats and humans alike receded into the warm silky folds of sleep.

I have now written a midsummer's poem for Smokey, the Bowmore distillery cat-in-residence whom I met when I was singing in the distillery as part of the Islay Festival. I wonder if Smokey could be 17 years old?                

SMOKEY THE CAT
Smokey the cat came from nowhere;
Just whisped in under some door;
Sniffed quietly around
And knew that she'd found
The best place to stay in Bowmore.
She'd arrived at Bowmore distillery
Where the finest malt whisky is made.
There was no welcome mat
For Smokey the cat
But she liked the place - so she stayed.
They say cats have more than one life
With re-incarnation and that.
Whether it's true
All that cat deja vu,
Smokey's a born again cat.
There's something about her that takes you
Back to the Lords of the Isles
When the cats of Finlaggan
Would go scallywaggin'
For miles and miles and miles.
It's the way she melts into the shadows
Or suddenly creeps up on folk
She'll always find you
Slinking behind you
The cat who was named after smoke.
She sits on the sill of the maltings
On days when the weather is nice
And while one eye sleeps
The other one keeps
A lookout for small birds and mice.
Small birds and mice eat the barley
So Smokey confronts them foursquare
But she pulls in her claws
And quietly ignore
The Angels who come for their share.
Felines don't care for whisky
Everyone understands that
But that peaty odour
Beneath the pagoda
Owes something to Smokey the cat.
On Islay, people made whisky
Long before it was chic.
The cat from Bowmore
Is nothing more
Than the ghost of the island's peat-reek.

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