Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Of much more interest to Trim were his explorations, which were many and varied, and there is much to be told about these fascinating excursions into the wilderness. For example, while doing a little exploring of the bush to the east of Rushcutters Bay he’d once chanced upon a group of blackfellows. It was a damnable hot day with the flies a great bother when he came upon a small group, whether family or not he couldn’t say. They stood upon a sandy headland leading down to a small harbour beach, three women, two piccaninnies and an adult male. The male carried a long sharpened stick and stood in a most curious manner by placing the sole of one naked foot upon the knee of the other, while resting quite comfortably on the other foot, his balance held secure by means of the stick planted in the sand.’

  ‘I’ve seen that in a pitcher!’ Ryan grinned. ‘When we did an excursion to the Museum. Abo standing in the nuddy with his leg up like that, his donger showin’ an’ all!’

  Billy nodded and continued with the story. ‘They wore no garments whatsoever and, as a cat, Trim approved greatly of this, the humans he was mostly acquainted with were not fond of bathing and paid scant attention to the laundering of their apparel, adorning themselves in all manner of extremely smelly drapery. Cats are by their very nature fastidious in their attention to their grooming and this lack of personal hygiene was one of the characteristics Trim disliked most in humans, who used their tongues for talking and noisily gobbling down food, but never for grooming.

  ‘By contrast to the convict population, these blackfellows were of a good physical proportion and had about them a most delicious smell. Seeking its source, Trim observed that upon the head of each family member there rested a fish, its entrails cut loose to attract the flies. So dense were the flies that swarmed above their heads and rested upon the fish that it was as if they were a swarm of bees. But here then was the clever idea, not a single fly came to land upon the native fellows themselves, which Trim thought to be a most clever contrivance. What’s more, when nightfall came and the flies departed, the family had the means of a hearty meal.’

  ‘Yuk!’ Ryan called out.

  ‘Trim took satisfaction in being both explorer and sailor but was ever mindful of his true vocation as a ship’s cat. He enjoyed the wilderness and became a great expert on what it contained, the nature of the animals, birds and plants of the land, but he took his official title, Master Trim Flinders, Master Mariner & Ratter, very seriously and worked hard to distinguish himself. He knew himself to be well bred but also well able to rough it with the best. During the course of his life, he faced many vicissitudes and some considerable hardship, which he accepted with equanimity as part of the sailor’s lot.

  ‘Trim started his seagoing career as an apprentice sailor and ratter where, I am told, he performed with merit but was often rebuked for asking too many questions.

  Though this did not stop him, he was a cat with a most curious nature. Trim became a Master Mariner & Ratter and was eventually responsible for inventing several new ways of combating Rattus oceania, the notorious ship’s rodent known universally to be the most vicious and cunning of its tribe. As Matthew Flinders once observed to him, “To question everything is important, for knowledge is power and ignorance is enslavement. When we accept without questioning, we forfeit the power to control our own lives.”

  ‘Trim was very much a cat in control of his own life, but he also carried a second title which he took seriously. The title concerned was Companion to the Ship’s Master. Trim always insisted that had it not been in the captain’s heart to give him this title he would have remained in obscurity, a good ship’s cat and sometime explorer. It was the relationship he shared with Matthew Flinders that brought him to the attention of others and resulted in his gaining a small but secure place in the history of Australia.

  ‘Matthew Flinders was a man bred to loneliness and oft-times needed a friend he could talk to, who, in the best traditions of conversation, took the role of an intelligent listener. There were things he told Trim of a private nature, some of which were not always to his personal credit, such as attitudes and preferences which he would not have admitted even in the letters he constantly wrote to his wife, Ann. One such secret was the disease of love, which he caught on the island of Tahiti while sailing on the Providence as a midshipman with Captain Bligh.

  ‘These letters to Ann, which he would often read to Trim, contained a great many ardent declarations of his love and expressed a constant regret that they were so cruelly parted. Trim was inclined to feel that this ardency was intended to be a compensation for their separation, a form of marriage that took place with quill and ink on paper. It was Trim’s observation that his master was an awkward man who much preferred his ship and his navigational scribbles to the connubial bliss to be found in an attentive wife ensconced in a rose-covered cottage.

  ‘Trim’s opinion of his master must be taken seriously for he knew Matthew Flinders more intimately than probably anyone, sharing his cabin with him while they sailed together for much of the time Matthew Flinders was charting the coastline of New Holland. When he’d completed this extraordinary task, Captain Flinders sought Trim’s opinion as to the name he should give to this new territory, pointing out to him that it was known variously as New Holland, Terra Australis and the Great South Land, none of which being satisfactory now that its true dimensions were known. Besides, it had been circumnavigated and charted by an Englishman.

  ‘ “What shall we call this territory we have so well surveyed, Trim? What shall we add to this land Australis to make it our very own?” It was late and Trim was half asleep. “Eh?” he said, not fully hearing the question. Whereupon Matthew Flinders clapped his hands together.

  ‘ “Capital, my dear! Drop the s and add an a, what a clever cat you are, we shall call it Australia!” ’

  ‘That’s dumb!’ Ryan protested, enjoying Billy’s little joke.

  ‘It was a name that greatly pleased Matthew Flinders’ masters in England, who didn’t much care for the name New Holland, the name given to the Great South Land by the Dutch explorers. It was a constant reminder to Britain that another country might be entitled to make claims on this vast new territory. The Frenchman La Pérouse had landed in Australia and the French were also making claims to the new land. So Britain proclaimed the land terra nullius, called it Australia and demanded that henceforth it be seen as a part of the British Empire.’

  ‘What’s terror nullius mean?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘Ah, it means “empty land”. In Latin, terra means land and nullius means empty. You see, the British penal colony established on this new land was not strictly legitimate as the Aboriginal people already occupied the land and were, and still are, its true owners. So the British government decided to ignore this small technical hitch and declared that the land was “empty” and that its indigenous people, the Aborigines, were not sufficiently civilised to be included in the human race and henceforth this “empty” land belonged to Britain. Rather a convenient decision, I’m sure you’ll agree?’

  ‘I suppose the Abos were all too pissed to care, eh? Them putting a cut-open fish on their head for the flies.

  Yuk!’

  Billy smiled, the boy didn’t give up easily. ‘No, lad, it was the European invader who introduced alcohol in the form of rum to the natives. Shall we go on, then?

  ‘Now when I say Trim was with Mr Flinders as a constant friend and listener that’s not entirely true. You see, the problem was Matthew Flinders was a bit of a dreamer and someone had to run the ship when he was busy looking through his eyeglass and measuring and drawing and scribbling his measurements on a giant piece of vellum with his goose-quill pen, scratching away with degrees of latitude and longitude, rises and falls, depths and shallows, shoals and rocks, coves, cliff-faces and sandy beaches.’

  ‘Vellum?’ asked Ryan.

  ‘Vellum is paper made of animal skin, they used it for important charts instead of
paper because it lasted longer and was much stronger.

  ‘The point is, the ship could have gone aground or perished on the rocks a dozen times or more had it not been for a certain sharp-eyed cat who constantly watched, steering it out of danger. Mr Flinders always wanted to get closer to the shore so he could draw the dents and measure the bays with his surveyor’s instruments. Never looked where he was going, that one. “Closer!” he’d call, not looking up from his eyeglass. “Take me closer, damn you, helmsman!” And Trim would have to yell out to the man at the helm, “Take no notice! Drop anchor now!” As a cat he may have had nine lives but he had no immediate plans to waste them all by means of drowning at sea in one single act of gross negligence. Such a calamitous end could happen simply enough when they had all their wits about them, treacherous shoals and unknown rocks abounded along an uncharted coastline. Trim had no intention of losing the vessel as a result of a bit of navigational scribbling.

  ‘Sometimes they’d drop anchor in some remote bay and go ashore with Mr Brown, the naturalist on board. Mr Brown was very fond of Trim and was always happy for him to go along, knowing Trim was a most sensible cat and not likely to do anything rash. They’d take to the wilderness or the desert to collect plant samples or do a watercolour painting of a specimen and in the process they’d see things you couldn’t even imagine. Trees so mighty they would measure four times the height of a ship’s mast, some of them possessing a base hollowed out by fire caused by light ning, the cavity remaining sufficiently large to accommodate a cottage.

  ‘Matthew Flinders didn’t much like going ashore, all he ever wanted to do was to chart the shoreline and mark the features you could see from the water, though he would venture ashore when some rising ground or hill allowed him to see the topography of the surround, or the flow of a river into the sea might take his curiosity as to depth and width and the strength of the flow. So it was Trim and Mr Brown who were the intrepid explorers. Mr Brown had in his possession a most wondrous and remarkable seeing instrument named a microscope, which wasn’t any bigger than Trim’s front leg from shoulder to paw. He allowed Trim the very great privilege of frequently taking a peek through this magical tubular device. On the first occasion he did so, he placed at its lower extremity a seed almost too small for the naked eye to see. Whereupon Trim looked through the top of the brass tube to see that it had been transformed into the size of a prize pumpkin. He couldn’t believe his own eyes. Cats have excellent eyesight yet the seed was but a tiny dot when he’d seen it shaken on to the glass stand and now it was a sight to behold, all cracks and dents, to be likened to a pumpkin or even a boulder in size and character. “Trim, lad,” Mr Brown had said that first time, “together with this little beauty we will unlock the secrets of all the exotic flora of Terra Australis.” Then Mr Brown said a remarkable thing. “There is more here to appease the appetite any botanist may have for the exotic discovery than all the plants in Europe should they be put together.” Aboard the Investigator they had cause to build a greenhouse of quite handsome proportions which was under the care of Peter Good, a man of good character and humour who would allow Trim to make frequent inspections of what he called “Sir Joseph’s sprouts”, the many botanical wonders of this new land destined as a gift to His Majesty’s botanical garden at Kew by Matthew Flinders’ benefactor, mentor and friend, Sir Joseph Banks.’

  Billy looked down at Ryan. ‘We can see many of these plants in the Botanic Gardens if you wish, Ryan?’

  Ryan nodded, but didn’t appear to be overly eager. ‘Sure,’ was all he said.

  Billy now sensed that all the detail he was putting into the story must sound like a rather tedious history lesson to Ryan. The observations that pleased him might not be so interesting to Ryan. He’d have to watch himself.

  ‘Trim found it most pleasant exploring with Mr Brown. Sometimes they’d see things you wouldn’t believe were possible. For example, once they came across these giant rats about half the size of a horse.’

  ‘Ah, bull!’ Ryan objected, ‘Rats half the size of a horse!’

  ‘Hang on, Ryan,’ Billy cautioned, ‘wait until you hear the rest of the story.

  ‘As they approached, the rats sat upon their tails and looked at them, calm as you like. “Mighty mother of all seagoing cats!” Trim thought to himself, eyeing the nearest tree for his personal safety, “If the rats are this size, how big then must the cats be?” ’ Ryan started to laugh. ‘They were kangaroos!’

  ‘Correct,’ Billy said, ‘Have you ever looked closely at a kangaroo? If you’d never seen one before and you were a cat, then it wouldn’t be too difficult to believe they were giant rats.’

  ‘Can we do some of Trim’s adventures on the ship, Billy?’ Ryan suddenly asked.

  Billy had been right. Since Charlie, he’d forgotten how to tell a story to a boy of Ryan’s age. ‘Sure, life on a ship in those days was pretty tough. You see a ship at that time wasn’t a very big place and, as you know, cats are by nature explorers. You may imagine that after a while Trim knew every corner of the ship, foredeck, top deck, main deck and the lower decks, every inch was familiar to him. He didn’t even have to look for new places for mice or rats to hide, because they’d all long since been used up.

  ‘There is always good accommodation for rodents available upon berthing at a new port of call. Rats are by nature a cunning and parsimonious lot, they simply cannot resist the prospect of travel and rent-free accommodation, so by the time the ship sailed there’d be a great many freeloaders who had crept aboard under cover of night. So great would this invading population be that it would occasion a major rat-housing shortage below decks.

  ‘Once out to sea again, all Trim was required to do was wait around and the newly resident rats would come scuttling up like a bunch of holiday-makers, falling over each other to sample the delights of life at sea. Trim would see to it that they received a most surprising welcome and, abracadabra, as if by magic, accommodation suitable for a young rat couple at present living with their in-laws and wishing to start a family of their own would become vacant. The newlyweds couldn’t pack up fast enough, not thinking to inquire why the previous occupants had thought to leave such a good address, thinking only that they were moving into a nice neighbourhood with pleasant ocean views.

  ‘You may find this strange, but no self-respecting ship’s cat wants a rodent-free ship. With the vermin sneaking on board uninvited when the vessel was in port, it would be easy enough for Trim to go on a rat rampage and eliminate them all in the first week at sea. But Trim wasn’t that foolish, he’d conserve his rat resources so that they lasted for the entire voyage, the idea being that the ship should be vermin-free just about the time it entered its next port of call. Trim regarded rats, once they realised that the ship under his captaincy was no floating holiday resort, as worthy opponents, naturally cunning and resourceful. His greatest dread was to be left with only a few mice and cockroaches to contend with. Mice, he thought, were rather stupid and too easy to catch. Cockroaches were even more dunderheaded, so there was little fun to be obtained by catching them, except occasionally to amuse the ship’s crew when the vessel was becalmed.

  ‘Although, I must say in their defence, cockroaches have survived unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, which makes them one of the ultimate survivors, so they can’t be that stupid after all. Trim did not share this opinion and it may well have been that seagoing cockroaches were somewhat inbred for lack of a procreational opportunity among their shore-bound kind, because he considered them positively retarded, proper idiots, not an ounce of commonsense between the lot of them.

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, Trim always kept a few rats in reserve, not just for sport and recreation during a long voyage, but also for the purpose of human relations. Let me explain, humans can be pretty difficult to manage at times and this was particularly true when tedium set in at sea. Trim would often enough have occasion to remind the crew who was responsib
le for their general wellbeing and relatively rodent-free environment. In other words, who was the real captain of the ship.

  ‘But being of a feline nature, that is to say, a cat, he couldn’t go about the task the way humans do, which is by fighting each other or flogging those who disobey the master’s orders. Humans are accustomed to asserting their supremacy with a bout of fisticuffs. “Biffbang! Thy nose is bloodied and I am master now!” Or “Whack-whack-whack, take a hundred lashes because I’m in charge of this vessel.” Trim was much too intelligent for such immature carryings-on and, besides, it was his observation that such tactics only work until the next blighter comes along and knocks the new master over and he’s now the one to be obeyed and so on and so forth. Or, in the matter of disciplining the crew by means of the cat-o’-nine-tails, the men eventually grow tired of being flogged and stage a mutiny, as they did with Captain Bligh.

  ‘Ships’ cats are a much more sophisticated lot when it comes to the management of humans and one of the methods Trim used was the retention of some well-placed rodents on board. This is how it worked. The ship’s galley is where they prepare the food for the crew and, as every sailor knows, ships’ cooks are not all that fussed when it comes to cleaning up around food, so there were always plenty of scraps left about, which means a ship’s galley is oft-times a land of plenty in the vocabulary of your average rat.

  ‘So, true to one’s calling, the ship’s cat is duty-bound to disabuse your seagoing rat of this notion to the extent that no rat would venture near it without risking Trim’s displeasure. This is a polite way of saying “without the prospect of undergoing a lingering but certain death”. “R.I.P.” inscribed on a rodent tombstone means Rats in Peace.