Boat Cat

Our little kitty recently crossed a milestone of one thousand miles at sea. She has joined what I can only assume is an elite group of domestic house cats who have seen dolphins, and she regularly dines on fresh-caught snapper and mahi-mahi. Cypress knows that when we turn the key, the noisy engine will soon be fired up and that the sound of the windlass after a bout of sloshing around means we’re settling into a calm anchorage immanently. 

She does lots of normal cat things too, like meow before settling into a bowl of chow, stalk the ever-changing location of sunspots, and skitter out of sight when a new person comes over. Her favorite hiding spots are under the paddleboard or dinghy when stowed on deck, and on the bookshelf or in the bed when they aren’t. 

Cypress has had a few swim lessons and has twice leaped off the dinghy or paddleboard to get back to the mothership. Like an acrobat, or perhaps a Navy Seal, she climbs the wind vane to get back aboard. 

Her true love is an orange hair tie I left on the floor one day. Her scratch post is some sisal rope wrapped around Azimuth’s mast. She is most content when laying in her bed and bopping a wooden ball toy, and happiest when on deck at night performing her gymnastics routine – leaping from dodger to sail pack to solar panels and back again, before running a lap around the boat. She watches pelicans and boobies and cormorants and needlefish and anything else moving in interesting ways through air or water. In the last few days, she has been hosting a one-sided standoff with some mountain goats and began expanding her territory to include the floating dinghy. 

Caring for an animal in general and this cat, in particular, is such a joy – determining what a meow might mean (food, water, bathroom, play) and having the easy ability to deliver any of the options with our attention, resources, and opposable thumbs. 

Here’s a bunch of pictures for Morgan and the rest of the cat lovers: