Able Seacat Simon Read online

  I threaded my way along the quay in the hope that, in this at least, my mother was wrong. And as I walked, I wondered how life might have been if the old lady hadn’t vanished from our lives the way she had. If the man with the dog – our most mortal enemy – hadn’t moved in there instead. If we’d not had to run away from him quite so fast.

  ‘Well now, you’re back again, are you?’ The voice was loud and close and clear. But not such a fright now, because today I had expected it.

  The quayside was once again bustling and noisy, gangplanks slung down from ships like so many giant tree creepers, disgorging sailors and fishermen, deck hands and mess boys; and stern men in hats, who dodged different men in different hats, cursing and chattering, weaved their heavily laden wooden carts in and around and between.

  From my vantage point, hidden in the gap between two oil drums, I had curled up and watched him for a bit. He’d come, I realised, from one of the tallest ships currently docked there, and was today, like the rest of the men that teemed around it, dressed differently from previously, in polished shoes and crisp navy kit. Their white hulk of a ship, which had been tied up for some days now, had a tall mast, and two pairs of guns that pointed forward, which I knew were used for something called war.

  The man stood in the ship’s shadow and considered me. He then looked around, and strode off, his shoes clicking rhythmically, and, before I had even stretched my paws out and yawned, had returned, holding something in his hand.

  He squatted down on his haunches again and held it out to me. ‘Sardine,’ he said. ‘Well, a piece of one, anyway. Freshly caught this morning.’

  I drank in the aroma that began to engulf me. I could almost taste it. ‘Go on, little feller,’ he urged again. ‘Help yourself.’

  I wanted to. Badly. The smell was almost hypnotic. But I hadn’t been so frightened since the last time I’d been chased – by the dog at the big house, who’d nearly caught me. And curiosity was one thing from a safe spot between two sturdy oil drums, quite another when you were standing out in the open, close to a human, and your heart was pounding almost out of your chest.

  I lifted a paw. Took a step. Cautiously sniffed at what he was holding out to me. But my instincts were too powerful. His movement towards me was only very slight, but still enough to have me skittering anxiously away.

  ‘Here, then,’ he said, laying the piece of fish on the ground in front of me. ‘Only grab it quick or the gulls will have it before you can say knife.’

  So I grabbed it between my teeth and bit down on it ravenously, all the while backing away towards the space between the oil drums. It would be terrible if a gull did steal it, because I’d never tasted anything quite so delicious in all my life – or so gloriously without fur or feet or whiskers! I was so engrossed then (almost in heaven; so much fish at one sitting!) that when he reached out to stroke me this time, I didn’t flinch.

  Though he did. ‘Gawd, kitty, there really is nothing of you,’ he said. ‘Is there? Poor little mite. Where’s your mum, eh? You a stray? All on your lonesome? You poor little blighter. Look at you shaking! Shhh, now. Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you, I promise. You know what? I’ve got one just like you back in Blighty. Well, like you, but there’s a good deal more of ’im than you, for certain.’

  ‘Hickinbottom!’ Another voice rang out, and this one did scare me – not least because, at the sound of it, the man whipped his hand away, snapped back to his feet and spun around.

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’ he called back, stiffening. ‘Over here, sir! Just coming!’

  ‘Good. Because there’s two dozen potato sacks here that won’t shift themselves, Hickinbottom!’

  ‘I’d better go,’ he whispered. ‘You enjoy your breakfast, little Blackie.’

  And with that he was hurrying back across towards his ship.

  Chapter 3

  ‘So there’s dry stores, and wet stores – and those big sacks over there, Blackie? They’re all the veg that’ll be going in the vegetable bins down below. Then there’s the tins. Loads of them to load. Corned beef and kippers. Chopped ham. Potted chicken. Feed the brute! That’s what they say. You enjoying that?’

  It was the following morning, early, and it had dawned dry and warm. And I’d greeted the sun with a full belly. I had caught a mouse in the small hours, and my joy knew no bounds. Neither did the gratitude I now felt towards my new friend, the sailor who’d given me the fish that had given me the energy – not to mention the confidence – to make my first kill in days.

  And now another sardine. This time a whole one, which he’d already told me he’d ‘half-inched’, whatever that meant, from the stack of crates near a fishing junk further down the quay.

  ‘Polish it off quick,’ he’d said, and I was obliging him by doing precisely that while he puffed on a cigarette and lifted his face to the sun, apparently as pleased to see it smiling down on us as I was.

  I should have known that there was going to be something different about today. I was a kitten, after all, so I was supposed to be good at sensing things. But I didn’t. Perhaps because of the fish, which took up all my attention, or perhaps just because I was so happy about my earlier catch. Either way, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

  I was cleaning my whiskers, looking around for a puddle of water I could perhaps lap from when the cigarette end was flicked away and the sailor’s hand reached down to stroke me. Or so I thought. Instead, his hand wrapped right around me and the next thing I knew was that I was being borne aloft – up, up, up, up! – and was held there, high in the air above his head.

  Terrified, I pinged my claws out. Then I mewled at him and furiously scrabbled my back legs against the inside of his wrist. He just laughed, pushed his cap back, and lowered me down a little, now holding me, legs dangling, closer to his grinning face.

  ‘Steady on, Blackie,’ he said. ‘You already know I’m not going to hurt you.’ Then he brought up his other hand and cupped it around my head, flattening my ears. ‘Shhh,’ he soothed, ‘shhh,’ even though I wasn’t making any noise now. Not so much as a hiss. I didn’t dare to. ‘No need to panic, is there?’ he reassured me. ‘No need at all. Look, you even like it,’ he said, rubbing the fur under my chin.

  ‘Look, you’re purring. See? I’m not so bad, am I?’

  I didn’t know about that. How on earth could I? This was a human who was holding me, and that should never, ever happen. Not even the lady in the big house had picked me up, ever. She wouldn’t have dared to. My mother would have gone for her. But he had just picked me up and held me like I wouldn’t mind at all.

  And that was the funniest thing. Despite my mother’s lessons clanging loudly in my ears – Never trust. Never touch. Never let a human lure or grab you – I found I actually didn’t mind him holding me. Which was no sort of thing for a kitten to be thinking. Not a kitten who valued all nine of his lives. It was at exactly that point, just as I was enjoying being cuddled, that I realised I might have made a terrible mistake.

  No, not ‘might’, I decided, as his grip on me tightened further. Had just made a terrible, possibly fatal, mistake.

  ‘You know what, Blackie?’ he said, lowering his voice a little, and confirming my worst fears. ‘I reckon you’d fare a lot better coming with me than staying here.’ And with that, I was suddenly gripped even tighter, and plunged into the fusty darkness inside his shirt.

  If I’d been frightened before, I was petrified now. The assault on my nose was the first thing – it was shocking. I’d never felt such an intense, frightening animal smell before. If that wasn’t enough to make me wriggle and squeal in terror, the lack of air, the furious rub of my whiskers against what felt like his skin – and other whiskers, the total blackness, the huff and puff and thump of his own breathing . . . it was all I could do to not succumb to the powerful instinct to claw and scrape and bite my way free.

  Yet some other instinct stopped me. It was inexplicable, but it prevailed. I don’t know if it was the constant f
irm but gentle pressure of his hand against my flank – now back outside the fabric that contained me – or just the voice in my head that had brought me back to him at the docks. Either way, it reassured me that he wouldn’t hurt me. And as we hurried (for we were definitely hurrying) to wherever it was that he was taking me, the scared part became, if not exactly less scared, more pragmatic. I’d made a choice. I’d been curious. And if my curiosity killed me? Well, then, so be it. After all, why had cats been gifted all those lives if not to use them?

  ‘Here we are!’ the man called Hickinbottom whispered, just as I was bracing myself for whatever was going to happen to me. ‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like ’ome!’

  Then he chuckled, causing the whiskers on his chest to jiggle against me and gusts of that strange human odour to prickle in my nose. I was glad to be fished out from under his clothing and plonked down in front of him, not least because there was a great deal more air for me to breathe. Though I was now so stunned that it didn’t even occur to me to run away. He rubbed my chin again, with a little finger, looking pleased with himself. ‘Welcome to the Amethyst, little feller,’ he said, pushing his cap back from his forehead. ‘And my humble abode. It might not look much, but you’re honoured, you know. These here are very superior accommodations for an ordinary seaman, I can tell you. On account of me being Captain of the Fo’c’sle, you see. I get all this to myself –’ he waved an arm around the tiny space he’d brought me into – ‘because it’s my job to make sure everything’s shipshape and in good order. Which is why I get berthed up here –’ he jabbed a thumb behind him – ‘right up front, next to the captain’s cabin. And you, me little feller, get first-class accommodations as well. Well, at least for the moment,’ he added. ‘I dare say you won’t want to stay cooped up with me for long; be all over the place like a rash before we know it.’

  Having no idea what sort of ‘accommodations’ might be classed as inferior, I looked around me to get a sense of where I was. On a ship, in the harbour – that much I’d already worked out, and everything I could see around me definitely bore that out. White. Everything white. Just like the ship was on the outside. Everything straight lines, hard angles, sharp edges. Cold to touch, most likely, both to the nose and to the paw. And a faint metallic tang in the uncannily still air.

  But where he’d placed me felt particularly, well, peculiar. I took a tentative step, and was immediately frozen in fear again; for the grey ground beneath me, which seemed to be made of some kind of matted hair, felt almost alive under my paws. I tried to get my balance, which was no easy feat. And just as I’d done so, the man called Hickinbottom slung his cap down beside me, sending tremors once again beneath me. And I wondered, pulling a memory from somewhere in my brain, if we were already rolling on high, stormy seas, of the kind Mum used to tell me stories about. I pinged my claws out and hung on for dear life.

  ‘You daft ’a’p’orth!’ Hickinbottom said, placing the flat of his hand beside me, then pressing it into the softness a couple of times and watching me wobble once again. ‘This here’s me hammock,’ he explained. ‘Me bed. It’s where I sleep. And, if you behave yourself, little Blackie, you’ll be sleeping here too. Though right now I need to stow it, quick smart,’ he said, scooping me up and plopping me down on the floor, ‘or the old man up there will have my guts for garters.’

  To my quiet satisfaction (because cats were supposed never to be wrong about anything) the floor I’d been put down on fulfilled all expectations, being slippery, unyielding and cold. Still, now I was here and fairly certain the man called Hickinbottom meant no harm to me, any lingering anxieties about what might become of me – I had, I supposed, been officially kitnapped – were buried beneath what I could only describe as a feeling of happy recklessness and glorious potential; I was on a ship, bound for the ocean and certain adventure. To a life beyond the island I had only ever dreamed about. Despite having so many reasons to be terrified, I couldn’t help but feel my spirits soar.

  Well, to a degree. If I thought too long, it was also very easy to remember that I was a very small, not-quite-yet-fully-grown animal, that I was alone with a human in a very confined space, and that I seemed to have no visible means of escape. I couldn’t help but wonder how such little birds and animals as the ones I had successfully stalked must have felt when I had had them gripped between my teeth or claws.

  So I did the sensible thing, and tried not to think too much about that, and to instead remind myself of all the good things that might come of this, and the kindnesses the man called Hickinbottom had already shown me – to try to focus on the excitement I couldn’t help feel about everything being so different and new.

  ‘Come on, move yer harris, Blackie,’ he said, interrupting my philosophising. He appeared to be engaged in some unfathomable and complex manoeuvre, requiring a number of very strange contortions. It was hard to be sure, but he seemed to be trying to turn the thing he called his bed into what looked like something else altogether, though whether he was achieving it was anyone’s guess.

  So, to be obliging, and because I definitely didn’t want to be stepped on, I quickly scuttled out of harm’s way, squeezing myself into the space between two strange metal objects that protruded from the wall, from where I could both keep an eye on his progress and take a proper look at the place I would also call home till such time as he decided it would be safe for me to venture out again. Though how long that would be, I had no idea.

  ‘Right, that’s me done,’ he said, finally, tugging at his tunic. ‘They’ll be weighing anchor soon so I’d best be skedaddling. I’ll be back in a bit, with some food.’

  Then he was gone. He was gone for some time, as well; time that I spent making circuits of the strange, tiny space, investigating every last inch of it. That done, I spent an even longer time washing my fur, and then monitoring the progress of a tiny, flitty fly, which, evidently much too high up to be concerned about my presence, went quietly about its business; something that seemed to involve bobbing back and forth just below the ceiling, and often knocking into it, for whatever reason flies did such kinds of things.

  And it was fine. It was pleasant having no pressing need to go anywhere (though, as for needing to ‘go’, I had to be judicious about that, opting, after some indecision, for a clean, obvious corner). I was happy enough, because I had grown used to enjoying my own company. Even before my mother died, I’d already known that I would have to leave her eventually, because the life of a cat was generally a solitary one, out of both nature and necessity. Cats – or so she’d told me – needed something called territory. Because cats didn’t really like sharing.

  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.