Twilight is here, changing the night shadows that dance through the open hatches into grey-purple. There are no stars to fade away this morning, the thick blanket that howls and sometimes spits at me has been laid atop our sky, blocking me from communing with Orien. I gave up trying a couple hours ago, climbed off my solar panel, and tucked myself into the laundry bucket Leslie left open and available for me the night before. I like the feeling of security it gives me, I sleep soundly here. I dream. I’m chasing a fat, juicy grey rat along the rain gutter, along the roof-lines of the apartment complex in Langkawi. In my dream, I know Andrew and Leslie sleep just below the tiled roof slats. If I can just catch this rat! I’ll bring it to them for a present.

My whiskers twich against the velvet feel of Sonrisa’s couch cushion. My feet paddle the air as they would when I leap and spring from ledge to ledge......GOTCHA! I make one wide jump spreading the full length of my front legs to back legs across the expanse of the space and time continuum, my tail pointed upward, directing my flight just like tail-rudder of a large airplane until I land with a silent pounce atop the grey rat in my dreams. I squeeze my eyes shut, I roll onto my side, and bring my hind legs up to kick! kick! kick! him to death, until he dissipates into a dream cloud and my paws come together to weave their daggered claws among each other, nothing in my grasp.

I wake from my sleep with a jolt. “Mrrrooooowwwwww?”

A long, mournful “Mrrrooooowwwwwww, “ sings through my throat, utter despair at losing my prey. I peek open my eyes, and I'm somewhere different. Sonrisa is silent except for the continuous rise and fall of "HHhWWhhhoooooooooo” the wind makes passing through her rigging.

The Ghost of Richard Henry Dana creeps close and whispers into my ear: “Katherine, you are going to starve out here and ddddiiiiiiiiieeeeeee.”

“Leave me alone, Richard." I swat him away with my left paw. I do worry he is right. There is nothing to hunt here aboard Sonrisa. No vermin at all! At least for now, I have my crunchies.

“Mrrow?” I don’t even bother to get up at first, I make my small “mewsings” to Andrew and Leslie figuring one of them will rouse from slumber and feed me. They always do.

In her foggy sleep, Leslie says “Good morning, Little Cat. Come snuggle.”

It will be a good morning when you get up to feed me. “Mrroow. MRRRRR-rroooww.”

“Are you all out of food?” Leslie asks.

No, I’m not out of food, that isn’t the point.

“Okay, Kitty, I’m up. I’m up.” Andrew says as he arranges his gangly limbs in the spider-man fashion necessary to swing himself from the V-Berth bed while not stepping on Leslie’s face. We go through the morning breakfast ritual. He pets me, and I purr so loud the purrs squeak as they exit my nasal cavity. He shakes my food container, I rub my cheek on it’s outer perimeter (both cheeks, both sides), he opens the lid, I sniff it to ensure it is as delicious as I remember it, and then he taps a few crunchies into my bowl - which, yes, is already half full.

“Must you wake me up before sunrise when your bowl is still full? Must you, really?” Andrew asks.

You see, whether my food bowl is full or not is neither here nor there. I must train them in their dedication such that the food bowl could never, ever possibly run empty. Our ritual keeps us several steps ahead of the game. Leslie would do well to learn my system, as she has taken on spreadsheet duties for the grocery acquisition here in the anchorage.

This all started months ago. I have withstood my slaves’ bitching, moaning, complaining, fretting, and even occasional noisiness associated with being delayed here in Uligan. But really, I’m quite enjoying myself. We haven’t been to sea for more than two months. They’ve turned on the engine only a handful of times, and each time it’s been used for only a couple hours.

I nap over here.

I nap over there.

And, I’ve made a discovery that has changed my life. Tiger Boxes. Now empty with Andrew's beer stash entirely depleted, these boxes are perfect for every use this small tiger can think of. If you’ve never tried it, you should. There is just something so soothing about a beer box. I think it has something to do with the nice, cooling barrier between my pristine white belly fur and their constantly greasy, sweaty skin. I simply do not mind being picked up so long as it is in my Tiger box.

Indeed, after I realized how much I liked this, I discovered that at any moment I can walk over to the Tiger box, sit down, look up at either one of my slaves with my big moon pie green eyes, and say: “Merp?” They immediately scoop me up in the box, holding it like a taco shell. I’ll let them take me anywhere they want in that thing.

This is the life. The only concern I have is the fact that I have not received a single delivery of my crunchies since we arrived here. My crunchy stash is holding out for now, but don’t think I haven’t noticed the fact that no additional crunchies have been delivered. Believe, you, me - I notice.

I thought I had made myself clear: I prefer crunchies. Back in Malaysia, Andrew and Leslie were trying to make me eat all sorts of strange things: like a peeled and boiled chicken egg. “Bleck!” No. Bring me rat, bring me gecko, but no chicken eggs. I want my crunchies. Andrew made Leslie buy a whole chicken once. He read a recipe on the internet that allegedly make cats “go wild” and he got it in his head that I might like crushed, ground, and seared chicken with a mixture of vitamins and minerals to make my coat shine. So, he asked Santa Claus to bring him a meat grinder, and one morning I wake up to the sound of raw chicken rolling through its gears. Leslie and I exclaim at once: “Gross!” I try to fold my earflaps down with both my front paws, Leslie squeeze her ears between two pillows.

Andrew put his culinary creation into my bowl and looked at me expectantly: “Kitty! They say cats go crazy for this!?” I licked it once, ew. I point my butthole in its general direction.

“Kitty!” Andrew says, disappointed. But no, I’m not going to eat it. I won’t eat it. I did not eat it. Not even for him. And so, I negotiated an unending supply of crunchies while holding them hostage in a jungle.

I will make exceptions for fish. My favorite fish are the kind Grin catches for me in his hull. A whole flying fish with wings, eyeballs, fins and skeletons are the best. I eat them whole and crush their skulls with my fangs!

Andrew catches fish, too. Imagine my terror the first time I witnessed Andrew transform into a slimy, huge sea beast with blue fins, strange wide eyeballs, and a stick coming from his head! I was enjoying a nap in the sun when he clatters and against Sonrisa’s hull, hauls himself up, and flopped onto the deck bringing behind him a giant fish, best only for humans to eat.

“HHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” I scream as I scamper down the companion way.

“Oh it’s ok, Kitty! I’m sorry Kitty!” He said, rightfully contrite. He cut off the whole head and offered it to me on a big, human-sized plate to make up for the offense.

“What am I supposed to do with this?" I asked.

“Eat the eyeballs!? You love to eat the eyeballs!” Andrew says.

Yes, but these eyeballs are about the size of a snooker ball.

Andrew relents and slices me off a piece of “sashimi grade” fish. It’s fine, I’ll eat it. In fact, I’ll even chat Andrew up a little bit in order to inspire him to give me another slice. But, it just isn’t the same as ripping the guts out of a rodent.

I want my crunchies.

I understand our situation. We are stopped, stuck, halted in a very remote atoll with very few groceries at hand. At first, all the different boats put in their orders with our Agent, Asad, and that poor man would have to go and grocery shop for thirteen different boats, none of whom really knew what may or may not be available in any of the shops. He’d load everything into the Coast Guard Boat and arrive ship-side to drop off our food, or Andrew and Leslie would take the dinghy and go pick it up.

They would return with their groceries and immediately wipe all the packaging down with Clorox wipes, and soak the fruit and vegetables in a water and bleach solution. While it might seem like this is Covid related, it's actually not. Fruit and vegetables last much, much longer if you take off the surface layer of bacteria, so Andrew and Leslie have always taken their foods through this process, especially if they were packing for a long haul.

I sniff around the latest drop off for Kitty kibble.

Nothing.

Then, grocery worries got worse.

The supply ships were halted due to the need for quarantine, and none of us knew when we could get fresh deliveries of anything. An opportunity would come without much warning and the whole anchorage would scramble to try to get requests in. Things were being distributed on a first come first served basis, and some sailors were going without any fresh fruit or vegetables at all because the available food ran out before their order could be fulfilled.

It all came to a boil over a box full of chocolate bars.

“We need a new system," The anchorage seemed to say.

Yes, one that will fulfill my need for Kitty Kibble.

Leslie volunteered to gather up the issues causing heat rash among the sailors, then design a system that would hopefully accommodate solutions for all the problems. She built off of a spreadsheet system started by one sailor and a centralized distribution system tested by another sailor to come to a system that would work better. Now, they order each item from Asad in the total kilos desired by the whole anchorage, he gets all that he can, and that batch is cleared through one particular boat (thankfully a catamaran for working space), then distributed fairly among all the boats with the help of other sailors working to measure and distribute all that came in. I sit next to Leslie on the table while she builds her spreadsheet from the shopping lists flying in.

“Please add Kitty Kibble.” I tell her. Mow-mow.

“Kitty, you are fine, we have plenty of Kibble left."

Mow-MOW! “Just order it, I say!”

“I’ll put it on the Wish List,” Leslie tells me.

She has been building the grocery lists as “wish lists”. We never really know whether the grocery run will turn out to be just a local run or a full opportunity to stock up on items ordered from the big city in Male. Often, the opportunity will come up, but then Covid quarantines will delay ships, weather will prevent the ships from reaching port before the vegetables spoil, or any other number of catastrophes get between sailors and their provisions.

Asad will always make sure they have something though.

"Everyone ordered flour, but all we have is one 50 kilo bag." Asad texts Leslie one day.

“Bring it over! We’ll split it up!" Leslie says, imagining sailors lined up in their dinghies, cupboard bins empty and waiting to be filled with flour.

Don’t let my crew fool you. They are making do. They are just learning to make the things they love from raw ingredients. Andrew makes yogurt, and Leslie has learned to make Paneer cheese from dry milk powder. Leslie’s sourdough bread practice in Langkawi is turning out to be a boone, especially when combined with the use of the neighborhood bread machine we’ve named Gusteau. He is carried carefully from boat to boat, a prize treasure everyone is worried they may drop in the drink.

“What local vegetables and fruit do you have right now?" Leslie asks Asad.

“Watermelon, eggplant, onions and copy leaves.”

“What are copy leaves? We will try some of those.” Leslie says, hoping to learn some new culinary wisdom from her hosts.

She's always ruining things that way. Andrew catches us nice fresh fish, and she insists on making the chili paste for BBQ chili fish, or battering the fish in flour, egg, and a smoked chipotle, thyme, and garlic powder coating then frying it in coconut oil. Indeed, the other day he went snorkeling and caught two lobsters! It just so happened that the groceries had been collected and there were some tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, powdered milk aboard - enough to make a lobster bisque. These people cannot complain while they are eating lobster bisque.

I, however, do not like lobster. So, I can complain until I get my Kitty Kibble - preferably the duck flavor, vacuum sealed.

I bide my time, looking as cute as possible, whenever possible. I sleep snuggled up to their feet until I am sure they are in that dreamlike state where suggestion is possible. Then, I stalk, as quietly and weightlessly as my predator paws will carry me until I am tickling Leslie's face with the flick of a whisker. “Order. Kitty. Kibble. Leslie."

I wait for some sign she's heard me.

“Eat. Fish.” She whispers back.