The Snake and the Coquis

A snake settles down with a group of Coquis who are perfectly happy, and tried to change them to suit her own agenda.

Once there was a fun loving, sometimes-wild bunch of Coquis that lived in the most lush and deepest part of El Yunque, in Puerto Rico.

They lived and played close to a very high waterfall that was just the perfect temperature, and kept the rocks and large leaves around the falls perfectly moist.

They were so happy, they called to each other and sang to each other all day, and all night.

In fact, almost every night, they would have a Baile, and the local Cuatristas would come out and play plenas and meringues, salsas, and sometimes Una Bomba.

They were very happy.

One day, a snake was transported all the way from a far off land. He had fallen into a truck shipping Platanos, and then put on a boat, and sailed to Puerto Rico. Once on the port, the box of bananas with the snake in it was carried onto a small truck and driven all the way to El Yunque.

Well, the snake slithered all the way to the deepest, most lush part of El Yunque, and found the Coquis in the middle of a cena eating Sancocho.

They invited Snake to join them, but it was insect Sancocho, and snake did not eat insects.

Snake decided she wanted to stay, and the Coquis were happy to have her.

She liked the music they played and the dances, but she did not like the awful, irritating noise they made.

Every night, she would bury herself in the dirt, or climb a tree to get away from the racket, but she could not get away from the sound.

Snake decided to call a group meeting.

For some reason, a rumor started and the Coquis thought Snake was going to make a Lechon Asado, so the Coquis made Arroz con Gandules, Tostones, Pasteles, Cuajo and some Bacalaitos.

There was no Lechon Asado, but there was enough food for everyone, so they all ate, and then Snake called the meeting to order.

“I have some ideas that would make your lives better, but I need to know that you will support me,” she said.

Well, all the Coquis became so excited they started cheering. They though Snake was going to organize parties and have Festivales and maybe some Artesanos come in and teach them all crafts. So, of course they all supported her.

“Well, then,” she continued. “The first thing I need to change is that you all not make your noise at night. I need to sleep, and I can’t sleep with all that “COQUI! COQUI! COQUI!”

All the Coquis became quiet.

“We can’t do that,” one said. “It’s how we are made.”

The others agreed.

“Well,” said Snake” If you can’t do this one simple thing, then maybe you are not ready for my program.”

The Coquis thought Snake was very smart, and seemed to know what she was doing, so after some deliberation, they agreed.

“Good!” said Snake. “Now for the next item of business…”

Snake went on to explain that she was very busy, and she was going to need everyone’s cooperation. She would, in fact, throw a couple of parties, but instead of being free like they usually were, all the Coquis had to pay. She made the Cuatristas angry with a rude comment, and so they stopped coming to the parties. She found other orchestas, and they were good, but they cost money too.

Another strange thing started happening too. Some of the older Coquis stopped coming to the parties and hanging out at the waterfall. In fact, for some reason, no one had seen those Coquis anywhere.

Every couple of weeks, another of the Coquis went missing.

Everyone assumed that they stopped coming because they just had to sing their beautiful Coqui song, and so they left the area to go sing where Snake could not hear.

Others had a suspicion that Snake had eaten them.

Snake asked one of the Coquis to prepare the area for a dinner party that was to happen the next afternoon. The Coqui went home and planned and made the centerpieces, called her friends and asked them to help with lights and table dressings, and was up till the very early morning.

When she woke up and carried what she could to the area where the dinner party was going to be, Snake had already set up the tables and decorated them.

“Well it didn’t look like you were going to do it, so I did it myself…I can’t count on anyone!” said Snake.

Snake did this often. She would ask someone to do something, and then end up doing it herself. She never delegated, although all the Coquis were willing to do whatever needed to be done.

Well, one day, Snake wrote a note and stuck it to the trunk of a Flamboyan.

It read: “Everyone must from this day forward, refer to me as Madam Vibora.”

The Coquis did not like this, and no one ever did it, except when they were talking about things she had said or had done.

A couple of them wanted to talk to Snake, I’m sorry, Madam Vibora, but whenever they said something to her, even it was constructive, Madam Vibora turned the criticism on the Coquis and claimed that she “always had to do everything”, and “No one helps me”, and “I’m very busy”.

The Coquis had a secret meeting to figure out what to do.

Although they came up with many solutions that would make Snake want to leave, they knew it was not right to do anything that would make her feel bad. They didn’t want to be mean or hurtful, so they decided not to do anything.

Well, you might not know this, but when Coquis are upset or stressed out, they sing.

Actually, who am I kidding, they sing all the time. When they’re hungry, fed, sleepy, happy, stressed, anything. Really.

What I’m trying to say is that the Coquis were about to explode. They had been very careful with not singing and calling out to each other so as to not bother Madam Vibora, but they couldn’t hold it in for very much longer.

One day, it happened.

At first, there was just one “COQUI!” sounding out. Then others followed.

Then, before you knew it, all the Coquis were singing and calling out and not caring if Madam Vibora could sleep or not.

This frustrated Madam Vibora so much. She tried to quiet them. She yelled at them and threw rocks at them, but the Coquis were so loud, (and so small) she couldn’t bother them.

Madam Vibora freaked out. She got so angry that as she yelled at them to stop, her fangs came out and she struck at one of the Coquis and swallowed her in one gulp.

All the Coquis went silent for a moment. They couldn’t believe what they had seen. Madam Vibora said nothing. She looked away from the judging eyes of all the Coquis.

Then, a distant sound came wafting in through the large green leaves of the lush rain forest. It was a Cuatro, a pandereta and a Guiro, and it was playing a Plena.

The Coqui playing the Cuatro sang:

Sana, sana culito de rana
Si no te vas hoy
Te iras mañana

The Coquis sang along as loud as they could, and Madam Vibora couldn’t stand it any longer.

She left El Yunque. In fact, she got on the next ship off the island.

The Coquis went back to living and playing as they had before Snake came along.

The truth is, the Coquis learned something from Madam Vibora. It was basically what NOT to do.

The Coquis elected a new president, and the group grew in quantity, but more importantly, in quality.

THE END

Here is a translation of some of the words used in this story.
Coqui: the common name for several species of frogs that live only in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
El Yunque: the rain forest in Puerto Rico
Baile: a dance
Cuatrista: a musician who plays a cuatro
Plena: folkloric music of Puerto Rico
Merengue: A type of lively, joyful music and dance that comes from Hispañola.
Salsa: a Cuban style of music
Bomba: a musical style with wild dancing and African type drumming
Platano: plantain
Cena: a meal
Sancocho: a stew
Lechon Asado: roasted pig
Arroz: rice
Gandules: pigeon peas
Tostones: Flattened and fried plantain
Pasteles: a plantain-dough wrapped meat pastry
Cuajo: soup made with tripe
Festivales: a festival
Bacalaito: deep-fried codfish and flour appetizer
Artesano: a native artist
Orchesta: an orchestra
Flamboyan: a flowering tree
Vibora: a viper
Cuatro: a 4, 8 or 10 stringed instrument
Pandereta: A Hand Drum
Guiro: A percussion instrument made from a hollow gourd with notches in the side.

Sana, sana culito de rana
Si no te vas hoy
Te iras mañana:

Heal, heal, Bottom of a frog
If you don’t go today
You will leave tomorrow

The Long Lost Shark

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

Once there was an old blind woman who held a door open to her small cabin in the middle of a forest, on an island the shape of a ring with a lagoon in the center of it.

She was holding it open for a cat with a rope tied to its tail. At the end of its tail was an empty bottle of rum. Well, it didn’t have rum in it. It had a rolled up parchment and a necklace with a marble attached to it.

A mouse was riding along on the old woman’s shoulder. The cat and the mouse were tired, wet and a little confused. For some reason, the old woman thought it was not a coincidence that the cat and the mouse had found each other.

What did she mean about “finding each other”. Thought the mouse and the cat.

Once inside, the old woman found a small vial with no inscriptions on it, unscrewed the top, and let the mouse lick the opening. Almost instantly, the mouse grew into a little girl, and the old woman wrapped her in a large quilt.

The cat had been watching in amazement. He had for a moment, on the beach just minutes earlier, though he had been looking into his daughter’s eyes when he looked into the mouse’s eyes. He now knew it had in fact been his daughter. He rubbed up against her legs and purred loudly.

The old lady untied the bottle of rum from the cat’s tail and uncorked it. She shook out the map and the marble necklace. She twisted the marble and it opened up. It contained a fine red powder. She took out a pinch and rubbed it on the cat’s nose.

The cat began sneezing, and with every sneeze, grew larger and larger into a full-grown man.

The old woman wrapped him in a quilt as well, just as the little girl realized it was her father.

“Father!” she said as she ran to him. “It’s you!”

“Yes, dear.” He said as he hugged her tight. “You’ve done well.”

“I had no idea, Father!” said the little girl.

“Nor did I!” said her Father.

They all hugged.

“Let’s have a look at the map,” said the old woman. “Is it still intact?”

“Oh,” said Father. “I’m afraid I’ve ruined it.”

She unrolled it and smelled the large wine stain, and then she put her tongue to it.

“I can fix this,” said the old woman. “Did they figure it out?”

“It looked like they did,” said the little girl.

“Did either of you get a look at the solution?” she said as she found a dark glass bottle from a top shelf with some letters and numbers written on it. She rubbed her fingers across the label and smiled.

“I think I did!” said the little girl. “Right before Father tried to knock me out of the chandelier.”

“Sorry about that,” said Father.

The old woman poured the liquid over the map, and the red stain disappeared.

“The red ink on the map is Lawsone your father brought from India,” said the old woman. “It will not be affected by the liquid. Can you read the map now?”

“Yes,” said the little girl and her father in unison.

“OK, sweetie,” said the old woman to the little girl. “See if you can recreate what you saw.”

The little girl took the corners and folded them over, pulled the inside out and reversed the edges and suddenly, they were looking at a cube made out of the map.

The woman felt the box-map.

“Oh,” said the woman. “This is correct. This is how I remember it. It’s been so long.”

She studied it, as did Father. They both smiled.

“What is it?” said the little girl. “What is the map for?”

“Well,” said Father. “A long time ago, your mother drank something I had brought home from a far off land.”

“Is that what killed her?” asked the little girl.

Her Grandmother looked toward her Father as if she could see.

“Well,” said Father. “Not quite.”

The little girl was confused.

“You told me she died a long time ago,” said the little girl, “When I was really young.”

Her Father put his hand on her shoulder.

“This map,” said the old woman, “Will lead us to the liquid.”

“Liquid?” said the little girl.

“It’s somewhere on the island,” said her Father. “It was so long ago. Your mother made this map when she hid it.”

“Mother hid the liquid? Why did she hide it?” asked the little girl. “Wait a minute, what does it do?”

“Well,” mumbled her father. “It changes you into an animal of some sort.”

“What kind of animal?” asked the little girl as she looked around in the trees. “Like a monkey or a squirrel?”

“Well, no,” said her Father. “Your mother was turned into … a shark.”

“The shark in the lagoon is your mother,” said the old woman.

“She’s been in the lagoon the whole time?” asked the little girl.

“Yes,” said her father. “but now that we have this map, all we have to do is decipher it.”

“Can I see her?” asked the little girl.

“No,” snapped the old woman. “She would not have wanted you to see her like this.”

The little girl sulked, then sat up.

“This liquid can turn her back?” asked the little girl.

“Yes,” said her Father. “I had brought it home from a journey and tried it on myself. Your Mother and Grandmother had the hardest time getting me to come back to shore. Apparently, the shark is a volatile animal and cannot be easily told what to do. They finally got me to drink it again to reverse the effects, and she decided to hide it.”

“She made a map just in case,” said her Grandmother.

“In case what?” asked the little girl.

“Well, my batch was not the only batch,” said her Father. “There was a pirate named Captain Tiburon who wanted my batch. The same merchant who sold me my batch had also sold the Captain some.”

The little girl sat down as her father went on.

“He had used up most of his by attacking cargo ships and apparently found out that I had bought the rest of the batch, and he wanted mine. He was a bad man. He had attacked and plundered thousands of merchant ships. Sailors were afraid to step onto any ship headed for the open seas. No one knew how to stop him, but they knew he was almost out of the liquid. So we all knew his time was running short.”

He took a deep breath and went on.

“We heard he was on his way, and your mother hid our liquid so he wouldn’t find it, and made the map. One day, he found us, and after a brief scuffle, the last little bit of his liquid was knocked out of his hand, and fell right into your mother’s mouth.”

“Oh, no!” said the little girl.

“I had no idea where your Mother had hidden the liquid, so he left,” said her Father. “But he had swam to the island as a shark, then turned himself into a man on shore, so he had no boat to get back to his ship which was anchored just beyond the lagoon. He was very irresponsible with his liquid.”

“No one has seen him since,” said her Grandmother.

“Did mother…eat him?” asked the little girl.

“We don’t know,” said her father.

They all sat quietly for a moment.

“A few weeks after that is when your grandmother arrived to live with us,” said Father. “Just in time, too, I was getting lonely on this island.”

Grandmother smiled.

“So, how did you know these other pirates were going to come and steal the map?” said the little girl.

“Well,” said her father. “Every few weeks, I’d go to shore and talk about a great treasure left by Captain Gato. I’d make sure everyone was interested and talking about it. I knew that if I had everyone interested, someone would take the bait.”

“What bait?” asked the little girl.

“One day, as I was on shore,” said her father, “I bumped into a man I had not seen in a great while. He was called “The Professor.” He was a very smart man. I knew that if he got a look at the map, he could figure it out. I was right. I just had to get him to show us, and he did, didn’t he.”

“Well let’s get looking at the map!” she exclaimed.

They studied the map for hours. Father’s memory was failing him. Even with the map folded into a cube, he was still befuddled by the landmarks.

“Your mother was very smart,” said Father. “She sure made sure we couldn’t find the liquid very easily.”

“This tree looks familiar,” said the little girl. “But it looks smaller than I remember. And this rock has something about it too, but again, it looks so much smaller than when I remember seeing it.”

“When do you remember seeing these things?” asked her Father. “I’ve never seen these things on this island.”

“I think I saw them when I was a mouse,” said the little girl. “When I was riding in the hem of the pirate’s leg on the way back to the beach.”

No one spoke for a few moments.

“Well,” said Father. “Do you think you can remember which way they took you to the shore?”

“I think so,” said the little girl.

So they left the old woman in the cabin and hiked through the forest to the beach.

They reached the beach much sooner than the little girl expected to.

“It seemed longer when the pirates brought me,” said the little girl.

“Well,” said her father, “Let’s go back and take another look at the map.”

The little girl took a long look into the lagoon. She thought she saw a dorsal fin rise above the water, but she couldn’t be sure.

They got back to the cabin.

“So, Father,” asked the little girl. “How did you end up as a cat?”

“Well,” said Father. “After your grandmother arrived, we occupied ourselves looking high and low for anything that could help turn your mother back. We gathered different potions and liquids from all over the world, but nothing had worked.”

“That’s when we thought of the idea to find someone who could figure out your mother’s map.

“It was your grandmother’s idea to turn me into a cat so The Professor would take me on his ship.”

The little girl was impressed.

“When you talked about the treasure, did you say there was loads of jewels and gold,” said the little girl.

“Oh, yes,” said her father. “I knew he’d be interested in the booty.”

They laughed at his ingenuity, and the gullible pirates.

“Wait a minute,” said the little girl. “How about you make me into a mouse again, Grandmother, and I get into your hem, Father. Maybe I have to be small to see what I saw.”

“That is a great idea!” said her father.

“Doesn’t fall far from the tree!” said the grandmother as she unscrewed the lid of the vial and let the little girl drink from it.

Instantly, the little girl emerged from the pile of her clothes on the floor and jumped onto her father’s hem.

Father ran outside with the map in hand, showing it to her daughter every once in a while.

“Wait!” said the little tiny mouse voice. “Here’s the rock.”

He looked down at where he was standing, and there it was; a very small rock with a hole in it that looked just like the one on the map.

Then a few inches away from the rock was the tree, which was actually just a twig stuck in the ground.

Father’s eyes widened.

“I think I remember what to do!” he yelled.

He pulled the stick out of the ground and pushed it deep into the hole in the rock, which opened a small door in a nearby tree.

Inside the hole in the tree was yet another vial filled with a small amount of liquid. Father tried to grab the vial, but his hand was too big and the door in the tree was too small.

“It’s too small!” said Father. “I can’t get it.”

“Let me do it,” said his daughter.

Her father carefully picked her up and put her into the doorway in the tree. The mouse took hold of the vial as her father held on to her tail and pulled her out.

---

When Father finally returned to the cabin with her Mother, the little girl was not a mouse anymore, and was sitting on the rocking chair on the porch.

The little girl leapt from the chair and flew down to her mother and hugged her so tight, and then hugged her father.

They laughed and cried.

“Mother,” said the little girl. “Come see grandmother. She’s inside!”

“Grandmother?” wondered her mother as she turned to Father. “Who’s in the house, dear?”

Suddenly, the door flew open and there stood grandmother, but she was not her usual sweet, calm self. She had a large rifle in her hands and was pointing it directly at the little girl.

“I’ll be taking the shark liquid,” she said in a strange raspy voice.

Father took the liquid out from his breast pocket and held it up.

“Here it is,” said Father. “It’s yours.”

“Captain Tiburon!” said Mother. “I knew you’d be back.

“You’re not my grandmother?” said the little girl.

“Sorry sweetie!” said Captain Tiburon. “You’re a good girl. Now step aside and no one gets hurt.”

He walked slowly past the little girl and toward Father, holding his aim on the little girl.

“I lived on the island for a few weeks after our last meetin’, then found my way back here,” said the Captain. “You labeled your potions very well. It didn’t take me long at all to find the one that made me look like this.”

“I thought she was your mother,” said Father to Mother. “I’m so sorry.”

Father held the liquid out as far as he could, and Captain Tiburon snatched it and backed up toward the beach, away from the family.

When he got far enough away, he quickly turned and ran toward the beach.

“It’s over,” said Mother. “We won’t be seeing him for a while.”

They turned to look for their little girl, but she had gone.

“Where’d she go?” the wondered and began looking toward the house.

They found an opened vial with no inscription on it lying on a pile of clothes.

“Oh, no!” said Father.

They both turned and ran to the beach.

When they got to the beach, Captain Tiburon was drinking some of the liquid. They could not see the mouse anywhere. Suddenly, a rock flew up from the ground and knocked the vial from Captain Tiburon’s hand.

Captain Tiburon turned into a shark and fell into the water. The vial that the stone had knocked out of Captain Tiburon’s hand fell onto a rock on the beach and smashed into a million pieces.

They watched the shark’s dorsal fin swim out into deeper waters, and then disappear.

He was gone, and he would never be turned back into a man.

The little girl’s mother and father ran and picked up the mouse and kissed her and hugged her.

They took her home and made her a little girl again.

That was the day they threw away all the potions that turned people into animals.

Except for the bird one. Flying around like a bird was fun.

The End

The Privateer Mouse

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

A little girl needs to keep her eyes on a very special map, and a cat makes it difficult.

Once there was a little girl who lived on an island in the shape of a circle with a lagoon in the center. She lived deep in the island, in a little wooden bungalow on stilts, with her blind grandmother.

Her father lived there too, but he had left a few months ago on a mysterious journey.

The last thing her father said to her was: “Don’t forget to feed the cat.”

This was strange because they didn’t have a cat. She thought it was some old proverb that she would have to think deeply about to understand.

The other strange thing was that he and her grandmother exchanged words just before he left as well. He handed her a folded parchment, and she handed him a necklace with a small vial on it the size of a marble, with a cat’s eye engraved on the front and a small bag with small objects in it.

He left, the little girl cried and the grandmother comforted her.

Their little house was very well lit during the day, with the curtains drawn and the sun shining through, but dark and quiet and only candle lit at night.

One night, after maybe 70 or so days after her father had left, the island alarms went off. Well, they weren’t exactly alarms, although they worked like alarms.

See, there was a shark in the lagoon, and when the shark noticed intruders, it became frenzied, since nothing much traveled through the lagoon. When the shark became frenzied, the local mosquitoes would swarm, hoping for a blood meal. Once the mosquitoes swarmed, the native animals would complain and start to move so the mosquitoes wouldn’t have a place to land.

Once the native animals began complaining and running around the cabin. The little girl and her grandmother knew someone, or something, was visiting.

Sometimes it was a lost seal that had made it into the lagoon, or the shark accidentally ran ashore trying to beach itself, but every once in a while, it was human visitors.

Grandmother heard the voices first. She quickly stood up, went to her drawer in the small Spanish writing desk, and felt around for a tiny little vial. There were no engravings on this one.

“Darling,” she said to the girl. “Touch this to your tongue.”

The girl trusted her grandmother with all her heart, and didn’t hesitate. As she touched the opening of the vial to her tongue, she was instantly turned into a tiny little brown mouse.

A tiny brown mouse emerged from a pile of little girl’s clothes on the floor.

“Do not be afraid,” said the grandmother. “If they’re here for the map, hop onto the hem of one of the men and go with them. Don’t let the map out of your sight.”

The grandmother sat down in her rocking chair facing the front door.

Five men rushed in the house with a bang. They turned over tables and broke things. They were yelling and making all sorts of ruckus. The Grandmother quieted them by telling them they were rude to knock over all her stuff. The rough men apologized and picked up a table and righted a vase.

One of the men said something about a map.

The mouse watched from her hiding place as her grandmother handed one of the men a parchment with a red string around it. It was the parchment that her father had given her before he left.

She jumped out from where she had been hiding, ran across the floor and hopped undetected into the hem of one of the men.

She peeked out to see her grandmother smiling at her as they left. Some of the men picked up the tables that were still knocked over and straightened some of the relics they had moved.

The men ran through the forest toward the beach. All the little mouse could see was rocks and sticks and fallen leaves.

The mouse found herself on a little jolly boat, then on a large ship. It was a pirate ship. She held her position in the hem until she saw her chance.

The man she had caught a ride on had sat down to eat at a large dining room with the rest of the crew.

The mouse jumped out as the man scooted his chair into position under the table, and ran across the room, up the bookshelf, across a rafter, and down onto the chandelier that hung directly above the middle of the table.

The chandelier swung back and forth with the movement of the sea. She settled in.

The men ate a large feast. They ate cheese and wine and bread and fish and chickens. They were al yelling and hollering. They were celebrating.

When the men finished eating, they cleared an area of the table and spread out the map.

She was directly above the map.

She was startled when she saw that one of the men was wearing the necklace that her grandmother had given her father, and it was not her father. What was this about? She purposed herself to get the necklace back as soon as she could.

She sat patiently for some time. The men were loud and ruckus, laughing at intervals and even throwing food at one of the crew.

That’s when she noticed the cat. One of the men tripped over the cat, almost sitting on him. The cat narrowly escaped being sat on and shot up the same bookshelf the mouse had used to get to the chandelier.

Maybe he hadn’t noticed her. She was right, at first. She sat very still. Something in her was very afraid of the cat.

Then she felt his eyes.

The movement of the boat swung the chandelier toward the cat. The cat was reaching out his paw. Then the chandelier swung away from the cat. The mouse was very happy when the chandelier swung away from the cat.

She swung back and forth for some time. It was very stressful. And not just for her. It looked like the cat almost lost his balance a couple of times reaching for the chandelier. The mouse caught a glimpse of the cat’s eyes and felt something strange, almost as if she knew the cat. But she had never seen that cat in her life. Not as a mouse or as a girl.

The mouse saw something in the cat’s eyes that made her feel something deep inside of her.

Well, then it happened. The cat lost his balance.

The cat reached out too far, the chandelier caught the cat’s claw, swung him off the bookshelf, and onto the table, where he knocked over a glass full of wine, right onto the map.

Everyone around the table stood up and yelled. One of them grabbed the cat by the scruff and took him out of the room. One of them picked up the cup that had spilled while another dabbed the map with his sleeve. The map was ruined.

There was some yelling and some complaining, and then some quiet.

Slowly, the men left the table. The map was left as it was. Soon, there was no one in the room, except for the mouse. Yelling and gunshots from frustrated men came through the door.

The mouse dropped down from the chandelier and quickly folded up the map, rolled it in a small roll and stuffed it into an empty bottle of rum.

She pushed it out the door and toward the rail. The men were so distracted that she rolled it past several of them without being noticed.

She was about to push the bottle overboard, when she remembered the words of her father.

“Remember to feed the cat.”

She remembered that the words he had spoken to her the night he left were strange, with her not owning a cat. She decided to do what her father had told her to.

She ran back into the dining room, foraged around for table scraps, found a fish, and took it in her mouth to the stern. She had heard one of the men say he had tossed the cat overboard on a dinghy, tied to a line.

The mouse found the line, climbed down with the fish in her mouth, and tossed the fish into the cat’s dinghy, then for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to chew through the line.

As she took the last nibble, the cat drifted away, and the mouse ran up the line to the deck again.

Once on deck, she found her way through the ship’s scuppers to the dormitory. She found the man whom she had seen wearing her father’s necklace sleeping in his bunk.

The necklace was still around the man’s neck.

She carefully climbed onto the man’s chest, unhooked the necklace and started back to the edge of the bunk.

Just as she reached the end of the bunk, one of the other men noticed her and started yelling.

“Mouse! Mouse!” he yelled. “Get the cat!”

She quickened her step, although she knew they wouldn’t find the cat, took the necklace back up the scuppers to the deck, dropped it into the bottle alongside the rolled up map.

She corked the bottle and shoved it off the deck, overboard into the ocean, then jumped in after it. She landed a few feet away from it, swam toward it, climbed on top of it and held on.

As she drifted, hoping she would drift to shore, she heard the captain yell “Weigh Anchor!”

The ship disappeared into the dark night.

She couldn’t tell how long she had been adrift, but suddenly, she struck ground. The sound of the bottle scraping along the sandy beach was music to her ears.

She waited for one more wave, hopped off the bottle, and pushed it the rest of the way.

She rested on the shore for a while. She was happy to be on shore, but she was sad for the cat. She was also thinking about the necklace. Where was her father?

The sound of the lapping waves and the occasional seagull was suddenly overshadowed by a “Meow”.

The mouse sat up and looked around, and saw in the distance, off shore, the cat in the dinghy.

The cat had made it. He’d be on shore in a matter of minutes.

The mouse was not sure whether to be happy to see the cat or run for her life. This was, you might remember, the cat that was going to dispose of her when they met at the chandelier.

She decided she’d take a chance. She waited on shore until the dinghy tumbled onto the shore.

The cage toppled over and opened, and the cat tumbled out. Right in front of the mouse.

After shacking the water off his ears, the cat noticed the mouse and bowed down as low as he could in front of the mouse.

The mouse nudged the cat to get up and had a good look in his eyes. For a second, the mouse thought she was looking into her father’s eyes.

The cat couldn’t help but think of her daughter as he gazed into the mouse’s eyes.

They both shook their heads as if they were shaking something off of their whiskers.

The mouse suddenly ran off and came back with strands of rope that had drifted onto the shore. She tied one end of the rope to the bottle and the other end to the cat’s tail. The cat was not happy about this, but he felt he owed her his life, so he went along with it.

The mouse motioned to the cat to follow her, and he did.

They hiked into the forest just beyond the beach, through thick undergrowth, over some fallen logs, over a small river, up a steep hill, and then the forest opened up to a small clearing with a small cabin in the far end.

The cat and the mouse made it through the clearing, up the steps and onto the porch.

There was an elderly woman waiting for them in her rocking chair on the porch.

“Well, well, well,” said the old woman. “You found each other.”

The cat and the mouse both looked at each other not knowing what the old lady was talking about.

“Well, come on then,” said the old lady. “Let’s get inside and get you two cleaned up.”

The mouse hopped up onto the old lady’s long dress and climbed up to her shoulder.

The cat, still dragging the bottle of rum with the map and the necklace inside, followed closely behind, careful not to get stepped on, or stuck outside.

Next: The Long Lost Shark

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