I didn’t know about that because it was a concept I’d yet to experience. It did make me think of the home I’d now left, though, and to wonder if I’d ever likely see it again.
But not for too long. Within moments, I was asleep.
Since it felt like particularly bad manners to keep my new friend awake half the night while I explored, I spent my first night as a seafaring cat doing what my mum had always told me was the answer to many a feline problem: I curled up at the end of the thing George slept in and was soon far away inside my head again, chasing moths.
It had been a day of rest but, for all that, some exciting discoveries too. I discovered that sardines could come in tins – little metal containers, opened by little metal keys – and that they tasted even more sardine-y than normal sardines did, which was quite a revelation. And also good, because it seemed that sardines were another thing of which there were apparently ‘plenty’.
I also discovered a thin white liquid, which George told me was called milk. He’d brought some with the sardines, and the taste of it took me straight back to a memory I’d almost forgotten. Of my early kittenhood, and of being so close to my mother that remembering the feeling now was almost painful. And via the milk, I also found out that George was called George, because the feeding of me seemed to invoke a memory for him too. Of the cat back at home, which he’d mentioned at the quayside.
‘George! Is that cat up in bed with you again, you rascal!’ That’s what his mother would often say to him when he was younger and would sneak the cat – who was called Sooty, and who he told me he missed very much – into bed to keep his toes warm in the winter.
Knowing that made me sleep all the better in this strange new metal world, because it was so nice to know I was already being appreciated. But George’s ship seemed to pay scant regard to the dreams we were both enjoying, because we were suddenly jolted wide awake in the darkness by a din so close and deafening that for some seconds I wondered if I was trapped in an oil drum that was being beaten with a stick.
Though, happily, I was soon reassured. I knew these strange whistling noises, I realised. I’d heard them often down in the harbour, back when I would spend the later reaches of many a night hoping the dark and quiet would lead to an abundance of prey.
It rarely did, as I still had so much to learn about stalking, but the moonlit routines had become familiar. The night insects gathering in the pools of brightness around the floodlights, the bats that would wheel and swoop and try to pick them off – not to mention make me wish that I, too, could fly. The sooty smell of the charcoal from the night watchman’s brazier and then, often, when the bigger ships were moored, the meandering humans, who would sway and bump into each other and shout as they made their way back to the quay, and to their beds. ‘Don’t fall in the drink!’ they’d cry, ‘I’ll bloody swing for her, so I will!’, ‘Hey, just you mind your ruddy language!’, and other incomprehensible babble, which would now perhaps start to make sense to me.
And then the pre-dawn cacophony, also human in origin, that started up long before the birds. A din that would begin even before the sun peeked over the horizon, with the clanking of bells and the squealing of pipes and the great wall of sound that was unlike any other; that of humans, many humans, being roused from their slumbers, and not liking it one little bit.
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.