Our Home Away from Home

Carol forgot to let me finish what I had to say in the last entry, and she embarrassed me by writing about my arthritis. I can get around just fine, only sometimes it’s to my advantage to let my humans think I can’t. Yesterday I was curious about all the new smells. Our house seemed the same on the inside, but I knew we were someplace different. Charlevoix was full of big powerboats with loud humans aboard; Northport is much quieter, with big trees and lots of pretty sailboats.

I thought I should describe where we live. “Cattitude” is different from a lot of sailboats.  It has what is called a “cat rig” (although I’m sure I don’t know why, and I know they didn’t consult with any of us cats before calling it that). This means that it has only one sail attached to the mast, and the mast goes through the deck way at the front of the boat. It’s also really wide for a boat of its size (it’s 30 feet long and almost 12 feet wide), so we have lots of room to move around down below. Smaller, traditional catboats are really slow, but “Cattitude” sails really fast, even when there isn’t a lot of wind. Roger says that has to do with how it’s built below the water. Sometimes when we sail fast, the boat tips a bit. I don’t mind too much. I try to sleep through it, but occasionally I get up for a snack. As long as we aren’t tipping over too far.

Carol put my litterbox in the head (I don’t know why they call it that, either, since it doesn’t look like anyone’s head, and I don’t think you’d like to put your head in it). She says it’s the perfect litterbox for me because it’s small, like me, and it has a handle on it so it can be moved out of the way when they need to use the toilet. It’s also Barbie pink, which is okay, since I’m a girl.

The best thing about being ship’s cat is that I get to spend a lot of time with my humans. Sometimes they leave me and go into town for food or to check email, but I just sleep and eat while they’re gone. They piled up a bunch of pillows next to the bed in the forward cabin so I can get up and down from it without help (although I like it better when Carol helps me, so I’ve told her I can’t do it alone. Please don’t tell her I can, okay?).