Dame Prue Leith drowned a bag of kittens as a child.
Dame Prue Leith drowned a bag of kittens as a child
The 'Great British Bake Off’ judge has recalled being horrified when her mum made her kill the little cats just hours after they came into the world.
Writing in her new memoir, 'I’ll Try Anything Once', the celebrity chef said: "My mother and I, then 11, had just drowned some kittens … and for weeks I imagined those poor dead creatures."
Prue, 82, explained take her mum took the heartbreaking decision because she was "unable" to find proper homes for them.
She wrote: "Too many kittens was a frequent occurrence and there had come a day when my mother, unable to find homes for yet another litter, decided to drown the latest batch.
"My protests were met with a firm, 'Darling, it has to be done. They are only a few hours old. They will hardly know it’s happening'."
Prue's mum explained to her that she didn’t need to hold the bag for too long to send them to "sleep". However, the TV star can still remember the kittens fighting "like the devil for life".
She said: "I held the bag under water until the last kitten had stopped mewing."
Meanwhile, Prue recently revealed that she enjoys being famous, saying she's "quite an egotist".
She said: "There have always been people who know me but yes, now obviously with 'The Great British Bake Off' I get much more attention, but I’m quite an egotist. I enjoy it.
"I like the attention. I don’t understand why people wouldn’t – of course I can understand if you were really really famous so famous that you couldn’t go to the supermarket and you couldn’t get anywhere."