Able Seacat Simon

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  All this happened now; all of it simultaneously and all of it deafening (the ship’s bell, I would learn, being particularly close). The combined clamour caused George, previously inert, to jerk and judder, and caused me, curled up tight in the warm space between his ankles, to shoot my claws out and cling on to the shifting grey mass beneath me, for fear of being launched into space.

  ‘Yeeooow!’ he yelled. ‘Streuth, Blackie! Jesus and Mary! Come ’ere. Gi’s me legs back, for Gawd’s sake, you tinker!’ Then he plucked me from the covers, with scant regard for my still being attached to them, and nuzzled my cheek into the hot skin of his face.

  ‘Aww, little feller,’ he said, his breath gusting warm and close, causing me to mewl at him. ‘This is nice, ain’t it? Almost feels like I’m back at home. Don’t be scared.’ (Which I wasn’t, just somewhat stunned, which felt reasonable under the circumstances.) ‘You’ll have to get used to this kind of racket, matey.’ He popped me onto his lap and ran his hands down my flanks, and as I luxuriated in the simple, rhythmic pleasure of being stroked by him, it hit me that perhaps I’d discovered something good. Something my poor mother might never have found.

  That perhaps a cat’s life didn’t need to be solitary after all.

  Chapter 4

  I learned so much in that first couple of days. I learned that it wasn’t terribly nice to be in a confined space with one’s toilet, and that the long hours between George coming back to check on me and feed me could grow almost intolerable to the nose.

  I learned that the sea was an even more shifting mass than George’s hammock; that sitting on the hard, polished floor of his tiny quarters was no protection from the feeling that if you stood up, your legs wouldn’t quite behave in the way that your brain had been expecting them to.

  I learned that the resultant queasiness (which had taken me completely by surprise, given how much the sea had always seemed a soothing, lapping presence) was one that was decidedly unpleasant, and that the only escape from it was sleep.

  So I did a lot of sleeping, which must have been good for me, because I’d never felt so strong and rested, and with the anxieties of how I’d fill my belly removed at a stroke, it was the kind of sleep that came very easily.

  Though I did feel scared at times. I couldn’t help it. When you’ve lived with constant fear, as I had since my mother had been taken from me, you couldn’t easily stop being fearful. And I knew I was right to be fearful about what lay beyond the fo’c’sle. Because, despite my instinct – that George was kind, that to be here with him was a good thing – I couldn’t help think about my mother’s many warnings about the lives cats like us should probably try to live. On that she had been clear, and with what had always seemed good reason: that, apart from the old lady, (who, even so, we should only approach with caution) we should keep away from, and be always wary of, humans. I couldn’t help wondering every time I found myself itching to explore further, did my mum die because she was too curious a cat?

  On the surface of things, no – she died because of the man who moved into the big house, and his dog. Because she was chased away from the one place where we felt no harm would come to us; because she ran, petrified, unseeing, out into the road. But her words dogged me, even so. I must keep my wits about me. Gentle George was one thing, the enormity of this huge metal vessel – and all the humans contained in it – quite another. I’d be a foolish kitten indeed not to be scared.

  Even so, the itch to roam soon took precedence over the fear, not least because it seemed George was keen for me to explore, too. Since that first morning when we’d sailed, he had not locked me in, and it occurred to me that as he’d told me what a fine ship’s cat I’d make I should better acquaint myself with the ship. So on the third day, George having been ‘mustered’ ‘on-deck’ (which I had by now worked out always involved him ‘skedaddling’ away at high speed) I decided it was time to venture out.

  The Amethyst was a place like no other I had ever encountered. Admittedly, in my short life, I had not encountered much, but here was somewhere – and something – that was completely unlike anywhere I’d ever been. Though its exterior held no surprises – I’d watched so many ships coming and going that the sight of a ship was very familiar – the inside of my new home was a mystery.

  Like so many human structures, the ship was a box, but unlike the cavernous warehouses into which I’d sometimes sneak in search of sleeping lizards, it was divided into lots of smaller boxes. The junction between each box was also very clear. Where I was used to squeezing myself into slim gaps between things, here it was all about ups and downs. To get from one space to another, as I found out almost immediately, it was necessary to first leap over a small metal wall. It was complicated to understand, being so full of things that made no sense to me; within each new place that my tentative travels took me I saw the same lacework of piping over all the walls and ceilings, the same inexplicable lumps of wood and metal, all rising up from the same, highly polished red floor. It couldn’t have been more different from the green softness I was used to seeing, or even the giant scale of all the human-made structures of the docks. It was so much to take in, in such a small, confusing space. I could only trust that I would begin to make sense of it eventually, and in the meantime not get hopelessly lost.

  I saw no one. It was true that I hadn’t travelled far yet, but this surprised me almost as much as it relieved me. Then I realised that the humans here must all have been ‘mustered’ – the whole lot of them; a thing I would doubtless also learn about in due course. For now I was content just to explore my immediate surroundings, and to try to make sense of my strange new abode. Though finding my way outside, back to where I would be able to see the sea again, took some time and some doing, and some retracing of my steps, because there seemed little logic in the way the ship was laid out.

  Back on the island, with its many meandering pathways and alleyways, it was simply a case of following my nose and eyes, and padding along, taking heed of the information from my whiskers. Up a slope, down a hill, through a space between railings; there wasn’t much in the way of obstacles that could effectively bar my way. In this strange place, however, quite apart from the multitude of strange little barriers I must hop over, there were also step-ladders everywhere, which looked fine to scale, but far less appealing to descend. It was clear that, though to look at they were quite different, these had all the same qualities as trees.

  Trees, as any cat would tell you, were never to be trusted. Trees were bewitching, confounding and ultimately deceptive, as I’d found out as a kitten of maybe not quite five months, when in bold pursuit of a large gecko. So easy to climb (a determined kitten could shimmy up one in no time) but, once there, it was almost impossible to get down. And my mother – this being a while before everything went wrong for us – seemed to find my plight very funny.

  There is a reason you’ll never see a cat up a tree, kitten, she’d observed, as I’d trembled and mewled and miaowed high above her. It’s because every cat recalls the day they did just as you have. Now, don’t panic. Be brave. Trust you’ll land the right way up. Land hard, yes, but the right way. You’ll see. Come on, try it. She’d been right. It had taken half a morning, but she’d been right about both things. That I would land the right way up – even if only after a terrifying, uncontrollable, claw-shredding downward scramble. And that I wouldn’t forget it. I vowed I would never scale a tree trunk again.

  I elected to avoid the ladders too, at least till I’d worked out how I might negotiate them. So it was via a rather circuitous route that I finally found the outside, and when I stepped out there at last, treading lightly and cautiously, I realised I must have arrived at what George called ‘on-deck’. Though there was no sign of anyone – which ‘on-deck’ had he been mustered to? – I knew because for the first time in many, many hours now, I could smell salt and feel a familiar breeze caress my fur.

  Being apparently alone – the shiny ground stretched into the far distance
in both directions – I drank it all in, noticing how much the air differed from that in George’s space in the fo’c’sle, which was air like no air I’d experienced before, being so thick with dense, alien, often startling odours.

  It was also fully light – a glorious morning, in fact – and I felt in no rush to explore further yet. It was enough just to look around me, take it in, letting my nose and whiskers reassure me, then cast my gaze upwards towards a sky so bright and butterfly-blue that I had to narrow my eyes in order to properly see it.

  But it seemed I wasn’t the only one ‘on-deck’ after all. ‘What the very devil do we have here?’ boomed a voice from behind me. ‘A cat? How’s a ruddy cat found his way aboard my ship?’

  Every cat’s life is precious, so instinct prevailed. I dug my claws in – though into nothing, so that wasn’t much use to me – and made myself as big and threatening as I could. Which I fully realised wasn’t very big, much less very threatening, but I was too frightened to think rationally.

  Except perhaps the dark part of my brain was being perfectly rational, because the other option, of running away, felt foolish in the extreme. Where exactly would I hope to run to? For what struck me most forcibly as I trembled beneath the human – tail fluffed, back a half-moon, teeth bared, teetering on tippytoes – was the sight, in the gaps between the deck edge and rail, of sea, and more sea, and not a great deal else but sea. The time for escape was clearly long gone.

  And, just as George had, this human – this huge, thunder-voiced male human – seemed to find my predicament very funny. He also wasted no time in reaching down and scooping me up, though he grabbed me not by my belly, but by the scruff of my neck, just as my mother used to do. He brought me close to his face then and dangled me in front of it, breathing his man-scent (another assault on my nostrils as well as my dignity) and eyeing me just as I might have done a shrew.

  For a moment, it was all I could do not to panic. One thing cats don’t do for pleasure is swim, particularly in waves bigger than they are. Given the way he’d just spoken, overboard was where I must surely be headed. I’d have wriggled, even knowing the futility of it, but the scruff of a neck is a singular location – by some clever trickery, which I’d thought was known only to mother cats, I was entirely unable to move.

  ‘Hmm,’ said the captain. (I knew he must be the captain, because only the captain would call it ‘my ship’.) ‘A stowaway, eh? Or did someone smuggle you on board, eh?’ He studied me intently for a number of seconds, as if seriously expecting me to answer.

  I sniffed him. He smelled markedly different from George, which seemed appropriate, because George, I now knew, was still only a man-boy. I knew because of his ‘bum-fluff’, as he called it, and his sharp observation that we were both of us teenage ‘waifs and strays’, give or take, causing me to wonder if we weren’t both in the same situation – both without our mothers, and neither of us feeling quite ready.

  This captain was clearly no man-boy. He was a man and I could smell it, in the same way as I was always alert to the scent of the big cats on Stonecutters Island, in whose territories I never dared tread. His scent was earthy, and salty, and strong in my nostrils, though also strangely reminiscent of the shady spaces on the island where the jacarandas dripped their purple petals. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘since you are here, you may as well come meet my number one.’ Upon which, I was relocated to the crook of his other hand, and carried up and down the step-ladders I’d slunk beneath before, my heart beating out a tattoo against his palm.

  ‘Weston!’ he boomed (as I would soon learn was the way of things with captains). ‘Look what I’ve found promenading down the foredeck, bold as you please!’

  He put me down on what seemed to be a sort of ledge, and, just as had been the case down on the deck, I took the view that to make a bid for escape would probably be pointless. Besides, I had not yet been thrown into the sea, so I suspected (at least, I hoped) that I might not. Though I could certainly see the endless glassy expanse of it, having now found myself in the place that must be from where the captain ran the ship.

  Every cat likes a high place (as long as it’s not a high place in a tree, of course) and this was a very fine high place indeed. It was right at the front of the ship, with a kind of windscreen to protect me from the stiff ocean breeze. In time I would realise that dozing behind it on a sunny day was a particular pleasure, but right now I was more excited by the awe-inspiring view; from up here, you could see right to the distant horizon; a place my mother always told me was special indeed, because that was where the earth met the stars.

  Reassured now (the captain would surely have launched me overboard by now if he’d wanted to) I began to wash my nose and whiskers, both because they’d taken something of a battering on the scent front and because I was keen to make the best impression I could.

  ‘Well, isn’t that the darndest?’ the man called Weston said, lowering a pair of what I would learn were called binoculars from his face, and shaking his head. ‘I saw this little feller on the quay the other day, and I was only saying to Frank that we should get ourselves a ship’s cat. Well, I say cat. This one’s only a kitten – not even a year old, I reckon.’

  My ears twitched hopefully. George had said exactly the same thing! The captain nodded. ‘Perhaps less. But he’s a handsome little fellow, isn’t he? Plucky, too. A bit small and scrawny, but if he’s a stray, which I suspect he must be, that’s only to be expected. And you know what they say about the strays round these parts, don’t you? He’ll probably make an excellent ratter.’

  I stopped cleaning my whiskers so the captain could stroke me, pushing my face tentatively up into his palm. It was a curious thing, this stroking humans seemed to like to do. Curious and nice, and I could feel myself purring. I’d hardly purred since my mother had died; it was like a muscle I had no use for. Yet here I was, astonished to find myself purring all the time, even when I hadn’t exactly meant to.

  I wasn’t sure what a ‘ratter’ was, but I had a hunch what it might be. This was confirmed when he explained that it was a very important post, for which he suspected a cat like me would be particularly well qualified, dispatching the vermin that were what he called one of the ‘most damnable evils of life in His Majesty’s Navy’, as they pilfered from the stores and munched their way through anything that took their fancy. ‘Or, rather, did,’ he corrected. ‘Perhaps no more, eh? Not when they get wind of this little chap in their midst!’

  I decided I liked the captain very much, and would endeavour to do my very best for him.

  ‘He’ll need some meat on his bones then, sir,’ observed the third man, who had a face full of creases and very blue eyes. ‘Shall I call down and have one of the mess boys bring him up something from the stores, sir? Some herrings, perhaps. I imagine he’d be very keen on herrings.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said the captain, plucking me up again for another inspection. ‘He’ll certainly need feeding up a bit, if he’s to be given a commission. And you’ll need a name, I suppose, little chap,’ he added, to me. ‘An official ship’s cat needs to have a suitable name.’

  ‘Socks?’ suggested Weston. ‘Or Felix, perhaps? Tiddles?’

  The captain rolled his eyes. ‘Tiddles? You hear that, Frank? Really? He’d really have me striding about the place, yelling “Tiddles!”? I’d never live it down!’

  ‘Alright, Korky, then,’ Weston suggested. ‘As in Korky the Cat. Now that would be apt, given the markings on him, wouldn’t it?’

  But the captain, though looking straight at me, seemed to be looking somewhere else, too. Somewhere I had a hunch might be a good bit further away. ‘Simon,’ he said eventually. ‘I think we’ll call you Simon.’

  ‘Simon?’ Weston and the other man said simultaneously. ‘Why on earth Simon?’

  ‘Very long story,’ replied the captain, very shortly. ‘And once you’re fed, perhaps you can accompany me on my rounds, eh, little Simon? Weston, did that maintenance detail make a start on the boi
lers yet?’

  Weston nodded.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the captain. ‘So once you’re fed, we’ll start in the engine room, then, shall we, Simon?’

  ‘Though you’d better take care not to let Peggy see him on your way down, sir,’ the man called Frank said.

  ‘There’s a point,’ said Weston. ‘He’s right, sir. Better not. You know, I’m not sure if she’s so much as even seen a cat before. I suspect she probably hasn’t, don’t you?’ He, too, came across and stroked me. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘And I wonder what you’ll do . . .’

  ‘What they’ll do,’ the captain corrected, ‘is to learn to rub along together as best they can. Just as we all do, eh?’

  He put me down again and, having nowhere else in particular I’d rather be, I stayed where I was, wondering what sort of foodstuff a herring might be. And, more pressingly, wondering who or what Peggy was. They called her ‘she’, so perhaps she was a lady, like in the big house. I hoped so.

  More intriguingly, it seemed I was going to be called Simon now, as well as Blackie. And I thought I could probably live with that. I was learning lots about humans, and the curious words they used for things. And given it could have been ‘Tiddles’, which, for some reason, had a bit of an unsavoury tang to it, I thought I’d probably got off quite lightly.

  Chapter 5

  I soon forgot all about Peggy. And with hindsight that was probably understandable. There was so much for me to see and do – much of it in the dark hours of the night time – and the Amethyst was a very big place.

  We’d been at sea a few days, and while the view of the horizon was largely unchanging, every day (and night) was still full of wonder because there was just such a lot to try to understand. The ship’s routines, for starters, which I was beginning to get quite a feel for. And quickly, too, because, though I still spent plenty of time napping in gentle George’s hammock, now the captain had discovered me I had become something of a novelty; so much so that on that very day he assembled the crew on the quarterdeck, and made my position on his ship official.