The Marooned Cat

This is Part Two of a Four Part series (The Red Map of Captain Gato, The Marooned Cat, The Privateer Mouse, The Long Lost Shark)

Once there was a cat that had found himself at a very busy merchant port. He did not know how he had ended up there or where he was, but he knew one thing, he was hungry, and he had a necklace on with a marble of some sort attached to it.

He made his way to a dock where a bunch of seagulls were flying circles. He knew that’s where he’d find food. He was right, but the seagulls were greedy and pecked at him and pushed him and shoved him. When he finally did get something in his mouth, a couple greedy seagulls snatched it out and flew off.

This happened twice. The second time, he angrily jumped at the bird, missed, and fell off the dock headed for the water, only to be caught by a strong hand.

The man that caught him looked very smart. Later the cat would come to find out the man was called “The Professor.”

“Hey, there,” said the Professor. “You were almost fish food. Let me get you out of here and into some grub.”

The Professor took the cat onto a ship and into the quarters. A door was shut, a plate set out, and a few morsels placed on the plate.

“I’ll be back with some water,” said the Professor. “You’ll be safe here from them gulls.”

The cat ate and fell asleep before the professor came back with the water.

The cat woke up from a long dream of being carried off on a cloud and dropped on a strange port, then put on a ship setting sail to the West.

The funny thing was, that was not a dream at all. All that had happened. He was no longer in a ship at port. He was in a ship on the sea.

Once he got his sea legs, he explored the ship at every opportunity. He found a couple of mice (which he disposed of rather quickly) and those pesky seagulls gave up their hope after a few miles from shore and flew back.

Everyone on board wanted to pet the cat. Every hand on board saved table scraps for him. The whole crew really, really liked having a cat around.

The cat would follow the crew around. He attended every captain’s meeting, he was in the kitchen tasting the day’s menu, he watched from the poop deck as the crew swabbed and hoisted the sails.

One day, in one of the meetings called by the captain, the cat overheard some talk of a treasure, and a mystery. The crew had gathered around some small bones, short lengths of string and a few smooth stones. They had laid them on the table that had been cleared of the leftovers from a surprisingly tasty fish stew.

The cat hopped up onto the Professor’s lap and had a peek over the edge of the table.

The objects on the table seemed familiar, but he couldn’t be sure. He needed a closer look.

He wiggled away from the stroking hand or the Professor, and walked around the objects on the table.

You’d think the crew would jump to get the cat off the table and away from their mysterious objects, but no one objected.

See, the finding of the cat was seen by the whole crew as a sign of good things to come, so when the cat hopped up on the table, they all hoped, maybe even expected, that the cat was about to do something extraordinary.

As far as the cat could tell, they were just a bunch of small bones, short pieces of string and a few smooth stones, so, after not too carefully stepping on them and around them and over them, he hopped back off the table to find something to eat.

The crew sat deathly quiet for a long time. They couldn’t believe what they were looking at.

That night, the cat was given fresh fish, fresh fruit, and all the milk and cheese and bread he could eat. The whole crew was making a big stink over the cat.

The sails were hoisted, the anchor was weighed, and the location of the sun changed.

Later that night, the Professor came and explained everything. He explained that his paws had carefully rearranged the stones, string and bones to mark a location not far from where they were.

This news was definitely surprising to the cat, but not as surprising as when he realized that he could understand what these humans were talking about. In fact, he had understood them the whole time he was on board.

The Professor was half talking to the cat and half just talking to himself. He had no idea the cat was listening intently to every word.

In fact, when the Professor talked himself to sleep, the cat swept his paw across the Professor’s nose, waking him suddenly, as he wanted to hear more. The Professor, none the wiser as to having fallen asleep and being woken up by the cat, started again where he had left off in the telling of the Mysterious Booty of Captain Gato, and that they were headed to the location marked by the cat’s paws earlier that evening.

The location was an island the shape of a ring with a lagoon in the center of it. This is where the Red Map of Captain Gato could be found. Well, at least that’s what the string and bones and sticks revealed.

There was something so familiar about the name “Gato”, but the cat couldn’t put his finger…I mean, paw on it.

One day, the ship dropped anchor.

The cat watched from the deck as a few of the crew rowed away in a small dinghy toward the shore of a small island.

That’s when the Cat discovered that the necklace with the marble attached to it was missing. The Professor must have taken it off while the cat was sleeping. He searched the whole ship, but found nothing. THE Professor must have been wearing it.

The ship was quiet.

The cat decided he would spend the afternoon in the kitchen. He fell asleep before long and was awakened by laughing and yelling and singing coming from the next room.

He made his way into the room where everyone had just finished eating.

He walked past the First Mate who slipped him a small piece of cheese.

Then the cat rubbed the Swashbuckler’s legs and received a soft scratch between the ears.

Suddenly, there was a roar of laughing, then bones, wads of bread and half eaten pieces of food came raining down on the cat.

The cat was about to purr in pleasure at receiving such a wonderful meal when the Swab almost stepped on his tail. He moved it out of the way just in time to see the Swab fall square on his back side, and then gathered up some of the food from the ground and hid under the table.

The cat was getting kicked and stepped on by boots and feet, so he darted out from under the table. He was about to slip out the door when The Professor suddenly snatched him up.

The Professor pet his head, then laid him down gently on the floor.

The cat quickly jumped up to the top of the bookshelf behind the captain. He’d be safe from kicking feet and chair legs way up there.

That’s when he spotted the mouse. He could hardly believe it. How could this mouse have gotten past his keen sense of smell, his cunning sight and his quick reflexes? How long had he been on board?

He must have come back with the crew from the island. Oh, this would not do.

The mouse was sitting rather innocently in the chandelier above the table, swinging with the movement of the ocean.

The cat stretched its paw, reaching for the mouse, as the chandelier and mouse swung toward him, and then as the chandelier (and mouse) swung away, he rebalanced himself.

The men around the table became quiet, and the cat reached again for the mouse in the chandelier.

The mouse didn’t seem to notice the cat and his antics.

Suddenly, one of the cat’s claws caught onto the chandelier and pulled him off the bookshelf, almost missing the captain’s head, knocking off his tricorn.

The cat swung right over the table and lost his grip, falling directly onto the table, knocking over a glass of red liquid.

Someone grabbed him by the scruff and took him outside before he knew what was going on.

The cat couldn’t get the mouse out of his mind. He needed to get back in that room.

But he would not be doing that any time soon.

They put him in a cage on a small dinghy, tossed him overboard at the end of a line, and left him there.

He was there for such a long time.

Finally, he saw something moving at the top of the line. Something was crawling down the line. It was the mouse, and he was carrying something.

The mouse stopped just short of paws-length from the cat, and threw a fish into the dinghy. The mouse looked familiar. Not familiar like he had just seen her, but something else. It was something with her eyes. He lowered his head to thank her for the fish.

Then the mouse ran up the line a few feet and started gnawing at the rope. She was cutting the cat free. The cat wasn’t sure he wanted to be cut free, but he couldn’t do anything about it, so he sat and watched the mouse gnaw the rope. She made short work of it, and before long, the cat was drifting away from the ship.

The mouse scurried up the rope and out of site onto the dark ship.

The waves slowly drifted the little dinghy away from the ship. As the cat watched the dark silhouette of the ship move away, he heard some yelling from the ship. He thought he heard someone yelling “Mouse, Mouse!”

The Cat wondered if the crew had caught and killed the mouse, and was surprised that he felt sorry for the mouse.

After a few moments, he heard the captain yelling “Weigh Anchor!”

The cat’s meow could not possibly have been heard over the sound of the anchor being pulled up.

“Hoist the main sails,” came the captain’s voice over the water. It was much quieter now. The sails went up, filled with wind, and the ship gained speed, moving further and further away from the tiny dinghy, and the lonely cat.

The ship became darker and smaller, and was swallowed by the middle of night.

Once it was gone, the sea was quiet except for the distant lapping waves and the wind.

No one knows, except for the cat, how long he was adrift. It probably felt longer than it actually was, but he saved his fish for as long as he could hold out. The cat felt very grateful to the mouse that he had at one point wanted to dispose of.

Next: The Privateer Mouse