Rowan the ship’s cat
She’s never been brave enough to leave the boat before, but after some careful investigation she hopped off this time.
She got too confident though. On the Tuesday we were supposed to be starting to head back towards the marina - 3 days sailing away - but she hopped off at 07:50 and didn’t come back until 18:50.
We were frantic! We were up and down the tow path calling her, asking other boaters about her, fighting through the undergrowth of the copse beside us, up to the industrial estate beyond to look and ask ……. We’d even got as far as working out how long we could stay before we had no choice and had to leave her behind and accept she was lost.
A blackbird finally gave her away shouting at her.
We went off and called again and she came creeping out of the undergrowth.
Goodness only knows where she had been all day but she seemed rather quiet and cowed.
Needless to say she was grounded the next day!! She was fine then until Thursday when we realised we had run out of water and needed to leave our mooring (shame - it was a nice one!) and go back to the marina that evening.
We untied the boat at the bow and stern and set off. We had barely gone 1/2 a boat length - just long enough for me to tidy the bow rope - when I tried to get back into the boat through the bow doors. Rowan leapt from the chair, out onto the bow deck, up on the side and could barely have had time to register that there was no longer land there as she leapt the 8 or 9 feet across the water back to dry land. I can only imagine her general fluffiness gave her the ability to fly!! She disappeared back into the bushes alongside the tow path while I could hardly believe I wasn’t trying to pull a drowning cat out of the water. Glen pushed the boat straight into reverse, we somehow managed to get back in our mooring and had to sit another couple of hours until we managed to catch her again.
She’s not going on the boat again!!!