Lou Milner - Jack and the Cat Go Adrift

Jack & the Cat
Go Adrift

story by Lou Milner

illustrations by Graham Harrop

Once upon the peppery shoal of time, not long ago, there lived an old sea salt named Captain Jack. He had none of the usual paraphernalia generally associated with men of his genre: no eye patch, no leg peg, no scruffy beard or mustache to twirl, and no parrot named Polly. What he did have was an almost indecipherable faded blue tatoo of something - possibly a ship - and a big brat cat called Ciro, a name, when pronounced, sounded like Zero, which wasn't much of a name, but better than Nothing.

Ciro and the Captain lived together in purrfect harmony on the island of Vancouver, just far enough from the mainland to do as they pleased without interference from family, friend or lawyer. A perinormal day was spent on the balcony overscoping the Strait. Together they'd sit hour after hour daydreaming, smoking cigarettes, and spying through their glasses whatever the wind blew by.

There'd be ships and barges and dinghys and gigs.
Then would come cruisers, cutters and brigs.
There'd be flotsam and jetsam and garbage to burn,
but nothing could move them far from astern.
For good or for bad, for right or for wrong,
they stuck to that terrace for short and for long.

Then one day, when the universe was unfolding as it shouldn't, a great big wind came up, and with it, the sea. It rose and rose, closer and closer, and even with the warning WARNING: OBJECTS ARE NOT AS CLOSE AS THEY APPEAR, both puss and man knew something was catawampous. But before they had time to pawnder further, a gigantic wave ripped them and their balcony from the foundation of their little home, and carried them off, yonder, far away.

With only the wind and the stars to guide them, they were in deep trouble. For several days and several nights, they flopped and floated and bounced about, clinging together like a twig in a furball. And the planking from their balcony, known now as the deck, was less than water-tight. Still, they held fast to the hope that the Canadian Coast Guard would soon dive to their rescue. Though they had been rationing, they were low on cigarettes and would surely die were they forced to live long without them. As fate would have it, no Coast Guard appeared, but a passing seagull dropped off a couple of butts and their cravings were temporarily extinguished.

Days turned to nights, and nights turned to days. And on and on it went till they lived through enough days and nights to feel comfortable saying a month had passed, and so had their addiction to cigarettes, which once again demonstrated the truth of the expression, "not all clouds come lined with silver paper."

Now their thoughts, formerly taken up with the desire for nicotine, turned to a hankering for food. After all, no matter how much they cared for one another, man and cat could not live on love alone. It soon became Waterford^TM clear to all concerned that in order to survive, concessions would have to be made, and breakfast served.

Ciro, formerly a cat of leisure, had no direct experience with the catching and digesting of real food. Up until this catastrophe, he had feasted on pellet-like bites of rice and lamb for the mature cat. So when the Captain commanded, "Ciro, fetch!", poor Ciro hadn't an inkling of what to do, and instead did the instinctual thing: he stretched, blinked, and yawned. This did not sit well with the Captain, who by now was tired, hungry, and hairy. He was, in fact, growing a beard, which would come in handy for those days when he needed to stroke it, sage-like.

"Where were all those flotsams and jetsoms? those barges and gigs?" wondered the Captain aloud. Ciro, too, had been speculating about the same darned thing, but all he could say was "Meow," which was hardly a comforting response. Could it be that they were the only two humanimals left alive, floating on the punny tide of life? No it couldn't be.

For one, there was that seagull. And for two, that seagull had cigarette butts, which would surely indicate that there was at least one smoker still alive. Now wait a minute, could the butts have been their own? washed from the very butt-bucket previously housed on their balcony? It was a possibility. But that still left the bird, who couldn't possibly be the only gull in the sea. Could he?

Caressing his beard, as was now required, the Captain had a thought. He thought that perhaps a fish would make a lovely dinner.

He fantasized about its size and its weight
and its fit on a plate.
He dribbled and drooled
but no one was fooled,
not his cat,
nor his gut,
nor his cigarette butt.

What! Still thinking about tobacco? Must have been the thought of dinner that tickled his itch. "You'd think a man would have better things to think about at a time like this!" said Ciro, or at least he would have said were it possible for Ciro to say anything, but since Ciro was still merely a cat, he meowed, "Meeoow," all the while knowing the Captain could understand; for the Captain was known in many a feline circle as "The Man Who Listens to Cats."

And indeed, the Captain did hear his call, and was really quite annoyed. Who the hell was Ciro to be moralizing at a time like this? Why, if Ciro were any kind of a cat at all, he'd be in the water catching a damned fish - and a big one, too. It was becoming more and more evident that the Captain himself would have to take the plunge. So the Captain told Ciro of his plan to go fishing. Ciro, being too much of a fraidy-cat to be left alone, meowed that he was going with, and the two jumped off the deck together.

Not altogether surprisingly, and as legend would have it, many cats learned to swim at an early age when their first humble home was a gunnysack and when, on day two or three, before their eyes had even opened, they'd be tossed in the ocean and instructed to sink or swim. They say it's like catching flies, once you know how, you never forget, and this was apparently true in the case of Ciro, who took to the sea like a fish to water,

and a magnificent cat-paddler he turned out to be. Which was entirely fortuitous, as our Captain was not nearly so favored. No sooner had his flank hit the brine than muscle spasms took hold, demobilizing him like a stone.

Were it not for Ciro's quick reflexes and the way he pounced on the Captain's neck to keep him afloat, this would have been the end of our tale. But thanks to Ciro the Super Cat, Master Jack did not perish.
Now, completely sobered by his close encounter with the murky end, the Captain rallied. No longer satisfied to leave his destiny in the hands of the sea goddesses, he regained control of his ship and his faculties. With his bare teeth, he pulled the rusted nails from part of the planking, and yanked up a couple of boards. Boards that would serve as oars. And with the strength of one ordinary man, the Captain began to row.

Ciro the hero was keen to assist,
volunteering his body for ballast.
Though grateful indeed,
there was more of a need,
said the Cap to his kit,
for a catalyst.

And that was the spark needed to project Ciro back into the water where his tail could be used as a rudder. Though not the intent, his rudder doubled as a lure and caught the attention of a school of fish - fish whose last lesson would be: don't follow the leader.

With tummies fully full, appetites appetitious, and breath stinkingly fishious, the hapless duo rowed on. Together they plied the ocean deep, searching for the narrows, the shore, the gravel bars, anything that resembled the world they once knew, but no familiarities came into sight.

Perhaps it was time they looked at the world differently, philosophized the Captain. Ciro thought for a minute: this was curious wisdom. Ciro did not like change. Ciro was a creature of habit. He ruminated some more. He tried desperately to remember what his habits were, but since he could no longer remember, it slowly struck him, the Captain was right.

They'd been looking at what was, rather than what could be. The most important things in life, they had. The sea would feed them, the deck carry them, and love sustain them.

What more did they need?

The Captain thought someday he might like to smoke a little seaweed, and Ciro thought a few cat toys might be nice . . . .

Their little minds wandered
and their fantasies drifted
for this was the way
that slumberland shifted.
Like waves on an ocean or
flies on a rod
dreams could be loaded with
old boots or cod.
Dreams could be endless or timeless or true
they could be happy and fruitful
or festered and blue.
They could sink quickly
or float buoyant and free
guided by none but a sou'westerly.
They could move quickly from here to afar
still never lose sight
of their home isobar.

And so it was with Jack and the Cat. Though their dreams carried them far away, their reality drifted firmly on a balcony high above the sea.