Able Seacat Simon

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Able Seacat Simon Page 5

by Lynne Barrett-Lee


  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’.

  The world was not right, however. Not presently. How could it be? I knew because of the new scent that was now invading my nostrils; which wasn’t rat, wasn’t human, and definitely wasn’t anything edible – but was, in fact (and the realisation made me wince; how had I not made the connection?) a scent I had already picked up on board here and there. A scent that I’d dismissed, as it couldn’t possibly be the one I’d thought it might be, or, if it had been, could be easily explained away (ships do get visitors on board from time to time, after all) as not meaning – as not possibly meaning what it now appeared it did mean – that there was a dog on board the Amethyst. A dog that lived on board the Amethyst. A dog called Peggy that – this last the most unbelievable of all – my human friends thought I should properly get to know!

  I was so full of fear by now that I knew I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions. Yet still Jack held on to me. Tightly. Then came a ‘woof’! Then a laugh. Then another and another. And there before me, as big and brown and horrible as I’d imagined, stood a dog – an actual dog! It barked again.

  The details were a blur. Ears and teeth and whites-of-eyes and general brutal fearsomeness. So there was nothing for it. With no thought for skin or cloth or, indeed, tins of herring, I struggled my hardest, and finally scrabbled my way out of Jack’s grip, up his shoulder, over his head and to the highest place available. Which wasn’t nearly high enough (it being the top end of a stowed hammock) as the she-dog called Peggy, who was still barking – ‘Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!’ – launched herself up on hind legs that were altogether too long for comfort, and kept on going ‘woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof!’, while the men, to a man, just stood and let her!

  Well, bar Jack, who was cussing and dabbing at his face. ‘Ruddy hell, Blackie!’ he complained. ‘Thanks a bunch!’

  ‘Well, what d’you expect?’ laughed a young sailor called Martin, who was standing next to him. ‘That he’d pop a paw out and say how d’you do? Nice to meet you? C’mon, Peg, pipe down, will you? Come away now. It’s just the cat.’

  ‘He’ll have her eye out, an’ all,’ observed the one called Paddy, looking at Jack. ‘He’s certainly got some claws on him for a little ’un,’ he added, inspecting the blood that was now running down Jack’s face. ‘Quite a scram, that. Here, get him down,’ he said, grabbing Peggy by the thick leather collar that I belatedly realised was fastened around her neck. Which was a relief, but only briefly, because, far from reassuring me of my safety, it only seemed to endorse the fact that she was every bit as dangerous as I’d feared. Still, I was grateful. At least for the half-second before I realised that George (who’d now arrived in the after-mess as well) was intent on getting me down from my place of safety, despite the desperation with which I now hissed at him.

  ‘You’re alright,’ he soothed, though he wrenched me bodily off the canvas even so. And with scant regard for my claws, which were very keen to stay attached to it. ‘Here you go,’ he said, ‘come on, boy – you might as well get used to her. Gotta rub along, you two have, after all, haven’t you? You’re shipmates! And she wouldn’t hurt you, honest –’

  ‘It’s not Blackie I’d be worried about,’ Jack pointed out, with apparent feeling. Had I not been so terrified that I thought I might pass out, I’d have had more space in my head to feel terrible about his face. As it was, though, I didn’t, because I was trapped in George’s hands now, and was being manoeuvred to within inches of the slobbering animal’s face. Did they not realise? Could they not see? It could eat me in a couple of mouthfuls
! Yes, I could see that it – she, whatever – was being tethered to one of my human friends by that collar of hers, but the fact that he not only held her but also straddled her with his knees didn’t inspire confidence. Was she really that difficult to restrain? And if so, what were they thinking? Had the whole ship gone completely insane?

  ‘Come on, Blackie,’ George was saying. ‘See, she’s just a big old softie.’ For which statement there seemed to only be evidence to the contrary, because even as he said it the dog kept going ‘woof woof woof woof!’ and her tail kept going ‘thwack thwack thwack thwack!’ against Paddy’s legs.

  I drew my lips back – I had teeth too, and I wasn’t afraid to use them – and though I couldn’t escape George’s clutches I also had claws. There was nothing for it. I pinged them forth again, shot a paw out and made a sideways swipe at the horrible animal’s nose.

  And, inexplicably, I was suddenly free! How had that happened? George must have decided to let go of me, I decided. So I hit the ground running, and I ran for my very life. As I bounded away I heard the bark change to a yowling, and Jack saying, ‘Well, that went well, didn’t it?’

  But it seemed Peggy hadn’t followed me – or she hadn’t been allowed to. That was the main thing. So perhaps they weren’t going to let her get to me, after all. Just to be sure, though, I decided I’d abandon that evening’s rat hunt, and hide in the safety and sanctuary of the officers’ wardroom instead. At least till I had recovered from my shock and fright.

  Which, bafflingly, nobody seemed to be paying any heed to. I could still hear them all laughing, even out on the upper deck.

  So I was living, and I was definitely learning. I soon learned that there were two reasons why it had taken so long for me to meet Peggy – the first being that, being a dog, she tended to sleep when it was dark, like most of the humans, and – as yet, anyway – was never ordered to do any night watches. And the second was that she’d spent several days confined to ‘barracks’, having managed to get a rusty nail wedged in her foot (I remembered my mum telling me that dogs could be prone to such mishaps) and had been made to stay safe inside while it healed.

  It healed. And once that happened it became clear that there would be no means of avoiding her, despite the great pains I took over the next couple of days to ensure that I wouldn’t bump into her – or that I wasn’t in a position where I could be forced into a confined space and risk being made to ‘meet’ her again.

  But there would be no way around it in the longer term. That was the thing that really galled me and worried me. I would have to find some way to live with this creature, for if I couldn’t, what on earth would I do? I was official ‘ship’s cat’ (a post I was proud to hold now, and which I loved) and Peggy, to my mortification, was apparently the ship’s dog, and since we were aboard the same ship there really wasn’t any way around it. We would both have to do what Captain Griffiths had already ordered. We would just have to learn to ‘rub along’.

  But how could that work? I spent many an hour pondering that problem. It didn’t just fill me with anxiety and dread, it went against everything my mother had told me. And not only because of what she’d told me – cats and dogs, kitten. No. And that’s all you need to know – just stay well away from them – but also because it had been a dog that had killed her. How could I ever forget that?

  Except, had it? No, in truth, it had not. It had been the car that had killed her. Yes, it was true that it had been a dog who’d been chasing her, causing her to run blindly into the road – something she would never have done otherwise. But it had been the car that had actually killed her, so though it upset me to question my mother, I now did. I no longer had a choice in the matter, did I?

  And little by little, despite the clamouring of my instincts, I began to get a sense that the fearsome Peggy she-dog might not be quite as fearsome as she’d first seemed. There were little things, for example, that didn’t make sense to me, such as a couple of days later, when I was taking advantage of a sunny spot up on one of the whalers, and Petty Officer Griffiths – yes, same name as the captain – passed below me. Peggy was trotting at his side – and just getting used to that was hard enough in itself. But then she’d barked at me – as frantically as ever – and I’d naturally hissed down at her, and then Petty Officer Griffiths had said, with something of a note of exasperation, ‘Look, Simon – she just wants to be friends with you. See? Look at her tail going! She likes you. She does.’

  Which made me think. Her tail ‘going’. What did that mean? Yet another thing to puzzle over. Shouldn’t I be concerned about her tail ‘going’? If a cat’s tail was moving – particularly at the frequency Peggy’s seemed to – that was definitely something for a kitten to be concerned about, particularly if the cat in question was considerably bigger. Was that not so for dogs? I wished I knew.

  There were also the things people said, and were still saying to me, like, ‘Go easy on her, Blackie’ and, ‘She’s just a big old softie’, as if (and I really couldn’t fathom this at all) the fearsome one was actually me!

  So I continued to observe her, and continued to ponder, and continued to make it my business to avoid her where possible, at least until I could make a bit more sense of things. I might have carried on doing so long into the future if it hadn’t been for the moment which probably had to come eventually, when I rounded a corner and she rounded another and there we were, face to face, on the quarterdeck, all alone.

  For once, Peggy didn’t bark. Didn’t blink. Didn’t move. She just stood there for a second or two and stared at me. And, perhaps because she hadn’t barked – as yet – I stared right back at her. And then I noticed her tail, which was wagging behind her, like a jacaranda sapling that’s been caught in a stiff breeze.

  Which means she likes you, I reminded myself, because that’s what they’d said, hadn’t they? And I kept trying to remember that, over and over, though with a marked lack of conviction. And then, quite without warning, she began walking towards me, trotting right up across the deck to me, all tongue and ears and eyeballs, and then, to my astonishment, she carried straight on past me!

  I spun around. She did likewise. I spun again. She did too. And it was only after we’d danced around each other five or six times that I realised she wasn’t trying to catch me, or maul me, or have me for dinner, but in fact was doing exactly what a cat would (if only to a relative) – just having a sniff, to say hello.

  Tentatively, anxiously, I moved around to return the compliment, trying hard to resist the instinct to run away.

  I made the appropriate hello back, feeling it was a rather strange thing to be doing. After all, aside from rats and humans (though I’d obviously changed my mind about the humans), dogs had always been my mortal enemy. More importantly, I had no idea how to communicate with a dog either, and wasn’t quite sure where to start.

  Happily, as I stood there dithering, wondering if I should continue with the sniffing, two young ratings clattered up the deck towards us, both carrying mops and buckets.

  ‘Would you look at these two?’ one said, putting his bucket down with a clang. ‘See? Told you they’d be fine when it came to it, didn’t I?’

  ‘Woof!’ said Peggy, seeing them both. ‘Woof woof woof woof!’

  Then she scampered back off down the deck and disappeared into a passageway.

  I felt no such compulsion. In fact, quite the opposite. I sat down on the deck and began furiously washing my hindquarters. A dog. I had just been licked by a dog. I really didn’t know what to think.

  Chapter 7

  The stars, when at sea, looked magnificent. They’d be magnificent anywhere, because stars can’t help but sparkle, but when viewed from the ocean, many miles away from the land, they have a brightness and depth and complexity and beauty that is beyond anything that exists on the earth.

  They were also a constant – a reminder that no matter how far I travelled, I could look up and see the same sky above me as I had as a kitten in Hong Kong. And
it was comforting to think that, no matter where my new life as a ship’s cat might now take me, my mother could – and, I hoped, did – still watch over me.

  On board ship, though, every aspect of my life was now different – so much so that I sometimes had to stop and take stock of quite how much it had changed since the day George had smuggled me aboard.

  For starters, I was living on the sea rather than the land, which was a very strange business for a cat, not least because my mother had been quite right about water, and how much I disliked being ‘wet through’. Curiously, though, it was a much drier world than the one I’d left on dry land. Yes, there were times when it was necessary to keep away from mops and buckets, but there was never any issue of having to hunt in teeming rain, to leap puddles, or to pad through muddy gloop.

  Neither did I now have to defend my ‘territory’ – something I’d only just begun to understand as a concept when George had taken me from the harbour, and one that, as a young kitten, had always loomed rather threateningly. Having a territory might be necessary, but there was nothing nice about it, as it seemed mostly to comprise a non-stop round of boundary-patrolling, invariably involving lots of angry confrontations, facing up to cats with bigger expansion plans than I had.

  But all that – to my great joy – was a thing of the past now. Here there would be no such confrontations to have to deal with. Well, bar perhaps the odd one with Peggy. But as it had quickly become obvious that Peggy’s idea of ‘confrontation’ was to greet you as if she loved you more than anything in the world, the only worry there was the foulness of her well-meaning tongue, dogs not being so particular as cats in matters of personal hygiene.

 

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