A Life Filled With Small Mercies, By Katherine Hepburn

Back aboard Sonrisa, I wrap myself around Andrew’s feet, curl my tail around Sonrisa’s mast and intermittently growl at Leslie when I feel the grouchies coming on. They say I’m a “good Kitty” and I think I am. I just had a moment, that is all. I’m glad they didn’t’ leave me out there in the jungle.

And yet, Andrew was still bothering me about things.

“Kitty, you have to try to wear this.”

I look at him and raise one eyebrow. Why?

“I never expected you to want to go forward on deck while we are under way, but the morning we left Agung Island that's the first thing you did! You can't sit on the solar panels in the waves.”

He moves slowly toward me, holding at his arms length a big foamy orange thing pointed at my direction. He flops it over the top of me, tries to clip it and I go on attack. “Mrrwaawwrrrr!” I hook my claws and gather four tracks of flesh beneath my nails.

“Kiiiittty!”

Leslie gets involved in the project and holds me down, speaking so softly I am almost hypnotized into acquiesence until I gather my wits and remember what is going on. “Mrrrawwwrr!" Andrew leaps back. I have this thing half attached to me. I jump to run away, but it’s so thick and heavy around my waist that it bumps the couch and I can’t get purchase with my feet. My back legs scrabble behind me trying to get me all the way up on this couch.

“Grrooowwwllll!"

How is this thing “safe” for me, if I can't even manage to jump from floor to couch? I jump again to try to make it into my sleeping shelf and I am too fat to fit through the bars. I get stuck and I can go neither forward nor backward! My tail swings wildly trying to paddle my way through the air with no luck. I am pinned halfway between humiliation and anger. Andrew wraps his hands around my waist and pulls me backward while I try to run forward and there is much struggle. He’s stronger than me, though, so he extracts me from the shelf and agrees to remove this confernal thing. I run and hide. Andrew and Leslie give up for now and head to the beach bar for curry, a fresh coconut and some time with their feet in Thailand’s sugar grain sand.

(Note the T-Shirts. They are truly cat people now.)

I get the sense things are changing again. I’d look out the hatch each morning, and everything seemed beautiful and calm, yet, Andrew and Leslie seemed nervous. Three times, now, Andrew has torn apart the bedroom in Sonrisa’s stern trying to fix some mechanism that lives under the bed. Each time, he has emerged more angry than he was wen he went in. This particular day seemed to be the day that would end all that fuss. He arrived with a new box, Leslie unstacked all the stores and provisions she had tucked neatly into that room three times before, all with the cheery optimisim that this would be the time of their success.

Unfortunately, no. When I woke from my nap, Andrew was sitting dejectedly at the bottom of the stairs, while Leslie and I were pinned in place by a boat that has been turned top-to-tail with parts and pieces.

It’s at this very moment that Pete and Jen arrive on Steel Sapphire, hooting and hollering while furling a series of flags strung upward on their mast. Andrew pokes his head out, waves, but then ducks back down like a groundhog. Leslie is pinned in place by junk, so she sticks her hand out of the salon hatch and takes a picture, but Pete and Jen can’t see her, and are let down by the less than jovial response to their arrival. What is with all those flags? I’ve never seen Steel Sapphire sporting so many flags.

I may need to intervene and help.

One day, the little dinghy boat named Grin arrived with a giant, heavy plastic box. It was so heavy, Andrew and Leslie had to rig up a crane system with Sonrisa’s winches, ropes and boom (the big metal pole that supports the bottom of the main sail.) They rumble around with one box, removing another box, until Pete and Jen come over.

If you would have asked me what might happen next, surely, I’d bet they would drink a gin and tonic, but I never would have predicted where. Andrew kicks over one of the two heavy boxes, and with a mighty glug it his the surface of the water. For a moment, nothing happens, and then - as if by magic - a big, red bouncy house constructs itself in the water!

The bouncy house makes a pop, a whoofff!, and then a long, drawn out hissssssss……that sounds just like a big snake.. ‘It’s okay, Kitty! It’s okay!” Andrew peers down the hatch at me, he can see my green eyes wide and curious. Even Sonrisa seemed a bit ill at ease. But, all our people seemed cheerful enough, drinking beers and floating behind Sonrisa until another man in the anchorage popped by and asked if he could have the bounce house.

They have one final crew meeting about me. Andrew scrolls through his phone, reading responses to an inquiry made to the humans of other Sealions like me. “Erja says her cats are smart enough never to go out of the cockpit while under way. They don't wear life jackets or harnesses."

“Yeah, but she already went up and forward! We know she’s silly."

“Yeah, but maybe she learned her lesson that time. She didn't seem to really love it." Andrew said. Oh, I loved it. I threw my ears back and let the salt spray splash me on my face. “It was the morning after the jungle adventure, maybe she was just feeling a bit rebellious.”

“I don't know....” Leslie said. “Nets around the life lines? Maybe we just lock her up?”

“We can't lock her up for ten days straight!"

No, you’d better not, I think.

Then, they pour an offering of rum into the sea for Neptune’s sake, wake the dragon, and we sputter off in the direction away from the rising sun.

Where are we going to day? I wonder as I yawn and stretch. Leslie starts rustling around with blankets, sheets, pillows, and she does something she’s never done before. She builds a human nest on my salon bench. I climb two paws to the outside of my sleeping shelf above the nest and look down. Whatcha doing?

“This is different, isn’t it Little Cat.”

Yes. What are you doing?

“Yep, you are in for a big passage, are you ready?" She scratches my ears and butts my forehead gently with hers. “I know you are ready! You are a good little Sailkitty, aren’t you?"

I mean I am, but...what does this mean. What are we doing?

“We are going to Sri Lanka today!”

I have no idea what a “Sri Lanka” is, but I guess I have little choice in the matter, so I climb down and sample some crunchies and get a slurp of water

The day dragged on, and by the time sundown happened I was surprised to find that we still had not anchored and stopped sloshing. Usually, we are done with the sailing by day's end. Leslie is laying in the nest with a mask over her eyes and Andrew is starting to make dinner, but we are still moving. I hop down and rub my face on his ankles. “What’s going on?”

“You ready for your first night watch, Kitty? Will you stay in the cockpit or should we lock you down below with the companionway doors?”

Lock me?

Night watch?

I don't like the sound of any of this.

We keep going and going. Soon, Andrew has gone to lay on the human nest and Leslie is up in the cockpit staring off into the distance where she can see Steel Sapphire keeping a pace near by - their glowing green navigation light tucked into the cloud cover above. I wait as long as I am able, then curiosity overtakes me. I hop up the stairs, across her body, and before she realizes it, out of the cockpit and onto my favorite perch: the solar panel.

"Heh!" I think.

“Oh no, Kitty!" She pokes her head around the dodger to look at me, then down to Andrew. "Andrew! Kitty just climbed on the solar panel!"

By now it’s dark, and I have to admit, Sonrisa is rolling around lolling from side to side far more than usual. “Sonrisa, hold still." I request, but she doesn't. “Sonrisa!"

“Little Cat! That’s dangerous, you have to come down now. It’s so dangerous! You could slide out into the ocean and we would never be able to find you. Never!"

I didn't really like the sound of that, but I try to play it cool. I stand up - squatting down for better balance - but I stand up, wave one paw at her to say leave me be, and move further away from her furrowed face on the other side of the solar panel. She grits her teeth. “Kitty! Come down now."

A particularly big rock sends my furry belly swiping across the solar panel and I think to myself, maybe the higher solar panels will be better. I climb up to the top of the bimini roof (the big sun shade over the cockpit) just as Andrew pokes his head around. “Kitty! Don't be stupid.”

"Well, we know we shouldn't try to grab her,” Leslie said.

I narrow my eyes to slits and challenge him. "Don't do it.”

*Please note, these photographs are representative of my mid-ocean solar panel behavior, but were not taken at the exact time of the drama. This event actually occurred at approximately 1:00 a.m., 200 miles+ offshore of Thailand.

The truth is, though, going higher didn't help. Sonrisa seemed to be swaying even more erratically than the solar panel below. I admit defeat and slunk down the windshield like it's a playground slide. I grab the ropes that stretch from the mast backward into the cockpit and hunker down atop them for grip. It’s better, but...still. Out here on deck I'm open to the sky and sea and waves, and ...oh I don’t know... the kracken? My stomach sinks with a sudden fear. The big rain puddle is even bigger than I’ve ever seen it before, if that can even be possible.

I look around and realize: I can't see land.

At all.

Anywhere!

No. Land.

“Oh dear! Where is the land? Where is the land?” I start meowing at Andrew and Leslie. They open a hatch down to the bed in Sonrisa’s stern bunk below, "just in case” I might want to take an easier route down. And, this does look rather inviting. They passed my test; they didn't try and attack me again like they did in the jungle. So, I decide enough is probably enough.

Down below, I lay on the floor and mop the cabin sole with my underbelly for four days straight. Waves would toss me right, then left, and I made very little effort to stop the slide. Sure, I changed position from in the hallway, to under the small table, to in the kitchen, to atop my rope rug, but other than that I stayed low. I'd stare at the wall for hours. Every once in a while, a frustrated energy would take over my body and I’d just want to jump or claw or attack! I’M SO BORED. I’d beg Leslie to play mouse with me. She would dangle the grey cloth wrapped in stretchy rope that looks and acts nothing like a mouse, and I would wave my claws in the air, but honestly, my heart wasn’t in it. I’d slowly pull it into my mouth and just rest my teeth in the tangle of it's rope tail.

“Will these waves ever stop?" One after the other in endless succession, sometimes we sway, surf, swing, or bounce like popcorn on oil. I lick my lips feeling queasy sometimes, but mostly I’m just lethargic. I put off using the litter box as long as I can muster, and then I drag myself to do “the business" while hunkering and bracing myself against the sides as best as I can - always fearing I may tip over into my own mess. The Egyptian-Sphinx forbid.

“At least we have good wind,” I think. I don’t know if I could survive days on end listening to the dragon growl. “Life is filled with these small mercies.” I tell myself as I stare into the abyss of my litter box.