"The most difficult part is to find a pet. They hid inside the walls and even in the ceiling"

He evacuated residents of Irpin town and saved hundreds of pets under shelling. Actor and showman Oleksiy Surovtsev has been rescuing cats and dogs abandoned due to the war since March 2022. In Irpin alone (a suburban town near Kyiv), there happened to be over a thousand such animals. Oleksiy returned most of them to their owners, while other pets have found a new family or are waiting for it in the shelter. He even had to pull some of those tailed pets out of the walls! The nickname the Bearded Cat Mummy has firmly stuck to Oleksiy on social networks.

My name is Oleksiy Surovtsev and I am 40 years old. Before the war, I was a theatre and movie actor, and in my spirit, I am still one.

From the very beginning, I thought about going to the war, so I took my loved ones to a safe place. I bought an apartment in Irpin just two months before the war. First of all, I went to sign up for joining the territorial defence unit. They said that there were too many of us, that they would call me, and until now [nothing]... I began to help the residents of my residential complex. Mostly women remained there, and so I helped with the evacuation. Then, when the bridge in Romanivka was blown up, the evacuation became difficult.

I came there and there were a lot of people on site. We made a narrow little bridge or rather a pathway. An all-around evacuation from the area of Bucha town began. There were the military, many volunteers, and we were there too. We helped people cross [the bridge]. There were around 4,000-5,000 people at a time. On the one hand, there was some insane fear; there was panic as people were evacuated from the area. Some of them fell, some lost their belongings, although there was no shelling there yet. Shelling was somewhere far away.

On the one hand, there was a panic of those who were evacuated, and on the other hand, there was a unity of those who helped to evacuate others. Everyone helped each other. That was when the feeling of the power of the nation appeared first. I helped to carry over some old women [who could hardly walk], and they had their belongings with them, sometimes even bicycles. Well, everything… Some belongings were in plastic bags, which ripped and all that stuff fell into the river, people fell too... It was all terrible. In addition, it was snowing and cold, the ultimate horror. Also electricity and water in our house disappeared. A candlelight dinner. Everything was [cooked] on open fire. The utmost trash.

Then there was a feeling... I always say this: a movie script consists of scenes, and if a scene is cut out and nothing changes, then this scene is not really needed. We did not have that on our stage. For example, while we were carrying an old woman [who could not walk], three other people could deal with other tasks. That is, you would be on stand-by until you are needed.

I did not expect that it would be necessary to evacuate pets on such a scale. Firstly, I love animals. I love them madly and I do my best to save everyone. It was instilled in me by my parents. My mother goes to the dacha [an out-of-town cottage] and feeds the animals there.

I had as many as 600 requests. I did not expect that this would happen. I did not think that I would be doing this. How can you run away and leave them? Over time, I established some more new contacts. I knew some intelligence information, like where one could go and where not. This information was not always accurate, but still it helped. I came under shelling a couple of times. It [a shell or a mine] landed very close.

There were some cases when I went to pick up some pets and incoming artillery shelling started. And there was an underground parking nearby. I went to pick up a cat and it [the shelling] started... This was not a single case. This is like when you get on some amusement ride and the worst thing is that you cannot stop it. It was the same here. They hit harder and harder, and it gets closer and closer. It was just really hot. But you know, I had a clear feeling that I would not die. Well, some kind of gut feeling. It helped.

It was always scary when I crossed the checkpoint. Everything was like in some super game. Now, I am still involved in saving pets. It is like a tourist trip now.

And you know that the pet is 100 percent there, but you cannot find it. It happened that they were hiding in the walls under the ceiling – inside a plasterboard wall. Of course, I called [the owners] and asked. Some pets hid in the ceiling and I could not take them out. Then I just fed them. There were some frightened pets, but there were also those who were glad to see me.

There were some wounded police shepherds, when a mine landed in a K-9 training centre. There were some cats in severe condition. There was a lady-cat from a burnt house. Unfortunately, it did not survive; it died. There were some kittens from a burnt house. Two out of three kittens survived. People told me, “Here is the house and there are kittens in the basement.” And the shellfire was very intense there. We drove up to it and saw that the house was almost burnt down. We crawled down and found a cat and three kittens.

There was a dog called Rubi. That was the most emotional meeting. Here is the story. The dog was left locked inside a townhouse for two weeks.

I had some cat food with me but no other sort of food. I gave the dog some cat food and it began to eat it. I thought that the main thing was to establish a contact between us. So I attempted to touch it and it bit me right there! Then, I kept coming and feeding it in the course of two weeks. First, it stopped barking at me and then it was already waiting for my next visit. I managed to get the keys passed over from Germany, where the owners were. I took with me a man whom the dog knew... He came over and Rubi knew him. When I opened the door, the dog realized that it could be free now and that a man it knew came up. This was a completely different dog now. It ran out and started circling around. It ran up to me too.

Now people call me the Bearded Cat Mummy.

This is the reason why. I saw one very nice picture showing a big and tough man with a beard who was holding a small kitten in his arms. And the signature on it said that you can be a tough macho man, but you will always be a bearded mummy for your kitten. Well, that’s how it developed.

I had quite a large Russian audience. For now, I have deleted a lot of Russian followers, and yet a certain percentage still follows me. It all went so viral in the world media... A lot of people took my video recording… I did not want people to say that it was some cut-and-paste video editing, that we thought something out... Here, have a look. I filmed it on my phone. I lived here. There is no video editing.

I am still shadowbanned on Instagram because I publically voiced my opinion. I voiced the truth, several times. People did not like the truth. I am not a grudge holder type of a person. I am good-natured, but I will never forget this inaction and aggression.

I don’t know what has to happen for me to forget it. Right now, I feel like I am in the right place, doing the right thing. You know, I always told everyone and it was always like this in life. I said that my job should bring me pleasure. It brings me pleasure now, but I don’t consider it a job. It’s rather an occupation. It is an occupation like acting, like dancing previously, like everything else. Everything I’ve done in my life, when it comes from the heart, it’s not a job, it’s rather a hobby, when you combine business with pleasure, so to speak.