I vill keeel you wifff my fangs, wiggly rope!

If Leslie won’t write anything, then I will. Sheesh. She is never going to finish all those Thailand posts, anyway. And besides that, you are probably wondering “where is Sonrisa?” and “what about the cat?” Well, I’ll tell you: THEY PUT ME ON LAND AGAIN! And even worse, they took away my cat.

When last we left off (before Leslie started filling in all the Thai Road Trip Stories) Andrew, Leslie, Katherine Hepburn, Grin and I were enjoying a month long shake down cruise to Thailand. What is a shakedown cruise, you ask? It is a trip designed specifically to put me (and the cat) through our paces to see if (a) my newly repaired keel will fall off; and (b) if the cat will acclimate to sea life. SPOILER ALERT: my keel stayed on and the cat acclimated to sea life.

So, we turned around and sailed back to Langkawi, Malaysia from whence we had just come, heeling over on a rambunctious sail and introducing Kitty to her sealegs. She handled it like an old salt.

We anchor in a calm anchorage for a couple weeks, where Andrew putters around with more maintenance items and Leslie leaves every. single. day. to go “work” at the Art Cafe.

“Why do you always want to leave?” I ask her one day as she gathers her laptop, mouse, wallet, and umbrella.

“You’re too wiggly, Sonrisa. You have no idea how cross-eyed it makes me to try to place illustrations into tiny grids while we rock back and forth in the anchorage.”

“It’s a calm anchorage!” I proclaim, but it’s no matter. She is acting like a rock-hugger right now, and so off she goes in Grin to stay on land all day. Allegedly, she is working on finishing our first children’s book.

“Hi Sonrisa! How’d your day go?” Leslie would ask me each evening as she would time her departure from Grin with the crest of a wave to loft herself safely upon my deck.

“Good. Did inspiration strike?”

Some days, she’d be glum. “Today, I’m a seasick unicorn, Sornisa.” And other days, inspiration would strike and she would be cheerful. Evening cocktails were served, and Andrew, Leslie and Kitty would sit with me in the cockpit to watch the evening light show roll across the anchorage.

“What are we going to do for the next few months? “ I ask Andrew as he putters around on board playing with this and that. “We can’t leave to sail across the Indian Ocean until the end of January/early February. The weather seasons are not right until then. We can’t just sit around here all that time, can we? Maybe we should sail to Sumatra!”

Andrew just blinked at me. There is something he is not telling me…..

“Ooohhhhagghgh! You are going back to the States for the holidays, aren’t you!”

He blinks, but it’s a blink of affirmation.

Shortly thereafter, we upped anchor and sailed to the Langkawi Fjords with bright green water and Langkawi Eagles nesting in the trees. There, we met up with our old friends, Steel Sapphire, Pete, Jen, and Grin’s Buddy Steel Steven a.k.a. Tango. They start coaxing Kitty into her crate.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Steel Sapphire, for lunch.” Leslie explains.

“Why are you taking the cat?”

“So she can have a play-date with Dixie!” Leslie says.

“Cats don’t do play-dates.” I explain.

“We have to try.”

I knew exactly what that meant; they are trying to figure out where to put the cat while they return to the U.S. for a visit over the holidays. I guess this makes sense, they haven’t been home for two Christmas seasons, and I know I can’t keep them every year. Nonetheless, I don’t want them to take my cat. We are buddies! I pout a little while they hang out on Steel Sapphire.

“What do you do all day over there!?” I ask.

Apparently, it’s been a long and drawn out strategy of trying to introduce Kitty to Dixie. Kitty doesn’t care. She made herself right at home, and she just wants to play. Dixie, on the other hand, is angry that Kitty is around.

“We tried to let Kitty out of the crate today,” Leslie tells me on day three of this extravaganza.

“Oh yeah, and how did that go?”

“Well, Kitty was fine. She romped around, then went to go find Dixie to say hello. This resulted in screeching and the waving of claws in Kitty’s general direction. Kitty shrugged and left the vicinity, finding a shelf on high ground to lounge upon. She is a roof cat, after all.”

“So?”

“Well, Dixie found herself a spot in the cockpit from which she could keep an eye on Katherine Hepburn, and spent the evening growling.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

Leslie just shrugged. “If this doesn’t improve, then keeping Kitty on Steel Sapphire isn’t going to work.”

“...and then we can sail to Sumatra!” I say, hopefully.

But, Leslie says no. The flights are already booked.

A second dilemma has apparently presented itself. While spending far too much time on Steel Sapphire, Andrew and Leslie are starting to reconsider our sailing route for next year. With the Somali pirate situation more under control than it has been in years, they are starting to consider sailing North through the red sea and directly into Europe rather than South to South Africa and around a cape.

“What do you think, Sonrisa?”

“I want to sail the cape.”

“But... Greece! Turkey! The Norweigan Fjords!”

“Yeah, I know,” I say, “we can go there after we sail the Cape of Good Hope.”

“Sonrisa,” Leslie says, “We are two years behind schedule, now. We have to cut something out, do you really want to cut out Europe?”

“No.” I say.

“Well, then, we have to decide between the two routes.”

“No.” I say. At this, Leslie and Andrew grumble something about running out of time and money.

“You’ll figure it out.” I tell them.

But, they gather up route planning books in their arms and carry them over to Steel Sapphire as well. What sort of nonsense is filling their heads? Stick with the plan. That’s what I say.

As the days ticked closer to November, I knew my time a float was drawing to a close.

“Why do I have to go back on land, though?” I asked one day.

“It’s safer, Sonrisa. How sad would you be if anything happened and you sunk at the slip?” Leslie asks as she’s washing dishes one night.

“We are hauling out tomorrow morning, aren’t we?” I ask.

“Yep.”

I resign myself to my fate and gather my spirits so that everything can go well tomorrow. I don’t want to be hauled out of the water, but the fact is: Andrew’s in charge and he wants me to be hauled out of the water. So, here we go.

Lucky for me, I am positioned right at the front of the yard, with a lovely view of the sea. I watch Steel Sapphire sail away with her crew of friends and only one cat, heading toward Thailand.

“What are we going to do with Kitty while we are on land? I don't want her to get away.” I told Leslie as Kitty makes laps around my deck, rubbing her sweet face on all my hatches to claim me as hers.

“She can’t get down. We’re up too high. I’m sure she’ll stay put.”

There she goes....

Andrew and Leslie lure her back aboard with a bribery of fresh fish. She returns, eats the fish and then scowls at them from the top of the locked companion way. “Mmmmmmeeeyyoooooooowwwwwwwttttt!” She says. This is more of a growl than a request. Eventually, Andrew and Leslie feel so bad that they let her out. She promptly jumps down again and heads into the boat yard to see what mischief she can find.

“You guys! Go get her!” I’m worried because there are stray dogs, other stray cats, monkeys, and so much garbage in which she can get into trouble. What if she gets hurt? But Andrew and Leslie can’t find her the second time. So, she stays out all night catting around, returning at early morning’s light. I watch her climb the ladder, one step at a time.

“You can climb ladders?!” I ask her. She hops up on my solar panel looking rather self satisfied.

That day, Andrew and Leslie take her to the apartment to visit with her old friend Bess and see if she will be happy staying on her roof with Astrid and Phil, Esben and Alva. They enjoy a birthday party, but when it’s time to come back to me, my cute little Kitty is waiting for them in her crate.

“You want to go back to Sonrisa?” Leslie asked.

“Meewyep!” Kitty responded.

Leslie tells me all this, and my little heart gets sad knowing we have two months apart. Kitty takes up residence on the suitcase, I don’t think she wants them to leave either.

That night, Andrew lets her out at her request. “She won’t be able to get down. Now that the travel lift has been moved, she has nothing to jump down on.

“Not true,” I tell him. “She climbs ladders!”

“She can’t climb a ladder.” Andrew insists.

“Yes, she can! I watched her last night.” But, he didn’t believe me. And what do you know? As soon as they turned their heads, she was down that ladder and out of sight.