Everywhere I went, I was treated like a hero; applauded, roundly cheered, and given all sorts of food treats. In fact, the only dampening detail in the joy of my new status was that now I’d done it once I must of course do it all again.
And again. And then again. Which didn’t worry me that much – after my kill I was as full of confidence as I was of sardines (sardines being preferable to rat parts on any intelligent kitten’s menu) but enough to ensure that I wasted no time on pride and preening. Instead, I planned my next kill, just as I’d done when my mother had first died (even though I was no longer desperate for food); tried to hunt as much with forethought and intelligence as with instinct, rejigging my watches, just as the captain liked the rest of the crew to do sometimes, so that I was always extra-vigilant at those times of day when the rats were most likely to be out and about. So it was that at dusk the following evening, most of the crew having just eaten their evening meal, I was patrolling the various passageways amidships.
It was the sound that came first, and it stopped me in my tracks, streaking through my body like a bolt of electricity.
‘You alright, Blackie?’ said my new friend, Jack, he of the first rat encounter. Jack was the youngest of the ship’s telegraphists, which meant he was in charge of communications, of which, on the Amethyst, there seemed to be many different kinds. He spent a lot of his time in a particularly pleasing place I’d recently discovered – the wireless office, which was situated forward, near the wheelhouse, and had a rather nice high place in it – a cosy kitten-sized nook. It was a warm wooden shelf and I had already taken quite a shine to it, both on account of its location and its proximity to various electrical items that beeped and tapped and often grew pleasingly warm as well.
Jack was at the stores today, seeing the quartermaster for a tin of herrings-in-tomato-sauce, and had obviously noticed my sudden immobility and stricken pose.
Was I alright? I realised I couldn’t provide him with an answer, because I wasn’t sure. Though my brain told me I was fine, other bits of me were disagreeing with it – which, as I learned early on, is often the way it works with felines; our ears and whiskers are laws unto themselves. I strained to listen, trying to believe I hadn’t heard what I’d just thought I had. But since no sensible cat refuses to believe the evidence of their own ears, I was already inclining to the view that I had indeed heard what I thought I had, when it came again, and then again, several times in quick succession, leaving me in no doubt that my terror was well founded. It couldn’t be, surely? But it was, even so. It was the sound of barking. There was a dog aboard the Amethyst!
Since the barking kept happening and I was still fluffed and frozen, Jack obviously worked out what had frightened me. And he laughed. (This sort of response to such troubling developments never ceased to amaze me.) ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’ve heard her, then? That’s just our Peg. Nothing to worry about. You’ve got nothing to fear from her. Bark’s worse than her bite, isn’t it, Dusty?’
‘She hasn’t even got a bite,’ the man in charge of the herrings corrected him. ‘Not that anyone’s ever noticed, anyway. Daft as a brush, that one. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well, I say that. She might easily lick a man to death. Had a screw loose from birth, I reckon, she has.’
I felt my fur settling flatter, and my pulse slow a little. Though, for all their smiles, I was by no means reassured. They seemed to talk about Peggy (a dog! I still couldn’t believe it!) as if she posed absolutely no danger at all, and that surely couldn’t be right, could it? What kind of dog was she? I mentally flipped through the dog-dossier in my head, which was, for obvious reasons, pretty flimsy. Not to mention largely half forgotten these days.
I tried to picture this Peggy, this ‘daft-as-a-brush’ dog, this ‘wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly’ dog. This dog with ‘a screw loose from birth’. None of these statements made sense to me, so they didn’t help reassure me. Neither did any recollection I could come up with from Hong Kong. I certainly remembered seeing tiny dogs from time to time, which were usually bought, sold and kept in bamboo cages, but those dogs had a yip more like a bird’s call. And they were the exception; the ones to which my mother said I need pay no mind. Every other dog I had ever encountered had been scary in the utmost; invariably a muscular brown whirl of aggression, growls and panting, their eyes white-tinged, their teeth dripping drool.
Having frightened myself all over again, I decided to leave them to it. From the depth of her bark, Peggy seemed extremely unlikely to be a tiny fluff-ball, which meant – and the thought was of scant relief, but some, at least – she was also unlikely to be able to go where I could. And since I was well-versed in the skill of evading dogs by diving into places they couldn’t – high places, small places, places that could only be accessed by superior feline climbing skills – I turned tail in the passageway, left Jack to his chortlings with Dusty and headed off in the direction of a rat run I’d newly discovered, which took them beneath one of the boats stowed on the starboard side of the ship.
But it seemed Jack wasn’t done with me yet. I was scooped up before I’d even managed to get out of earshot, then unceremoniously wedged under his arm. ‘Time you two met,’ he said. ‘Properly. Or else you’ll be scrapping.’
I miaowed my disapproval. I miaowed it again, louder. I miaowed it a third time, somewhat desperately and shrilly, as with every step Jack took, the barking seemed to be getting louder. I was by now beside myself, wriggling furiously. What was he thinking? He was even whistling, which only compounded my confusion. What had possessed him? You didn’t ‘meet’ a dog. Not if you were a cat, much less a kitten. You turned tail and ran, for your very life!
‘Oh, I know,’ Jack said soothingly. Though exactly what he knew he failed to share with me. ‘I know, feller,’ he said again. ‘But you just be gentle with our Peggy, okay?’ Which confused me even more. Me, be gentle with Peggy? But trapped as I was, I remembered I was a ship’s cat, and must therefore try to accept my fate – and perhaps my death – with dignity. ‘Try’ being the operative word in this case, as I’d quite left all vestiges of dignity behind, and it was only the firmness of Jack’s grip and my possibly misplaced trust in him that stopped me from disgracing myself.
We finished up in the after-mess no more than a couple of minutes later. I had previously enjoyed being with the sailors in the mess, particularly at this time of day. Though the hammocks were not yet slung, (so not yet available for snoozing purposes) it was still a cosy, companionable space, full of entertaining odours – the place where, once the meals were cleared away and everything was safely stowed, they spent most of the time when they weren’t working. There were lots of men in there now – the long wooden mess tables playing host to various groups of ratings, some writing letters home, others playing cards, some lying full-length on the benches – a few asleep, others just staring into space – while others, clustered in larger groups, were doing what they often did between times: something George had explained when he’d first taken me into the mess was generally called ‘putting the world to rights’.