The Adventures of Green Eyes the Nordic Tug --Cruising in the Time of Covid

  Adventures of Green Eyes, Cruising in the time of Covid, Chapter 1

ZAP! I’m in the salon onboard our boat listening to Scott get zapped by the last of the five new batteries he installed today. “Oops. That’s the first time that’s happened today.” 

ZAP! “Ouch!” Now I smell singed human. 

“Okay. I’m done,” he says.

“Done as in cooked, or done as in the battery installation is complete.” 

“Yes.”

One week earlier….

Two dreamers and a cat set off from San Jose, California on June 1, 2020 for another adventure of a lifetime. Destination: Green Eyes, a 26’ Nordic Tug berthed in Traverse City Michigan. Were we crazy to buy a boat just before the Coronavirus invasion? Were we nuts not to call off our plans for a boating summer? Were we insane to bring a cat? A cat who dives under the hassock in terror at the sound of the garbage truck, a leaf blower, the coffee grinder… Why would we think she would thrill to the chugga chugga of a tug motor, noisy rigging of adjacent boats, or that she would not mind the sound of a coffee grinder, just because it’s on a boat? And, unlike our previous cat Tiger, who loved water and ran to any running hose, Pika dashes away from the sound of a trickle. I wished I had my camera handy when, after three days on board she summoned the courage to look out the porthole. The look on her face was OH MY GOD. I’M IN A TINY NOISY HOUSE IN THE WATER. And off she slunk.

But I’m getting ahead of myself because the five-day cross-country camping trip across America to get to the boat was no bowl of cherries. 

The decision to bring our beloved cat on a six-month boat adventure that was to be the first segment of America’s Great Loop, a 6000 mile circumnavigation of canals, rivers, lakes, and locks in the Eastern half of the U.S., and part of Canada, but with Covid keeping Canada’s border closed, the Erie Canal not opening for the same reason, the locks on the Illinois River closed for maintenance and a whole lotta marinas operating at zero or half capacity, the loop has become more like a cross stitch. Perhaps we will spend the season in The Great Lakes alone. Only Covid knows. But I digress. Back to the cat. The decision to bring her with us all started when we were on one of our morning Covid walks back home. We turned down a street we’d never walked on. I mean never. I was born and raised in the neighborhood we live in but I’d somehow missed this little street. 

“Hey look,” I said pointing to a sturdy carrier for a large dog that someone had put in the gutter. “It says FREE. I can’t believe it.”  It was large. Large enough to hold Pika’s porta pottie AND Pika’s scarlet colored bed. Pika’s bed is to Pika what Linus’ blanket is to Linus. I looked over at Scott and could see he was thinking the same thing. We each grabbed an end and carried it back to our house.

“Put her bed in it and let her get used to it,” Scott suggested.
“No way. This is going to be full immersion. On the morning we leave, I’ll put her in it. She’ll be fine.”

A week later…

 “I think I better sit in the back with Pika for a few hours,” I said as we looked at a sweet, but unhappy kitty inside the too-big-for-a-small-kitty-carrier. “Mew,” said Pika. “Oh brother.” said Scott as he rolled his eyes. 

I covered the carrier with a small throw blanket emblazoned with “Green Eyes”, a Christmas gift to Scott. “There. It’ll be better if she can’t see.” And it was. “It will be interesting to see what she does on her leash when we get to our first campsite tonight,” I said from the back seat. I had bought a total of three kitty harnesses. One for land lubber walks and two life vest type harnesses for on the boat. We didn’t want to lose Pika. 

The first time we lost her was in Wyoming.

Each night after setting up the tent we’d move Pika’s bed, litter box, and scratchy thing (the thing we call scratchy thing is a thingy that she sharpens her claws on. It’s shaped like an S and she loves it, almost as much as Linus loves his blanket) into the tent. Then we’d bring the cat in so that she could feel secure, and climb all over us all night. 

“Tris,” Scott said urgently while shaking me awake at 2A.M. “Pika wants to go out.”

“No.”

“She really wants to go out. I have her harness and leash on her. I have to take a pee so I’m going out anyway.”

“She doesn’t have to go out. This is not a good idea,” I mumbled, exhausted from three days of constant worrying about the cat. (“She isn’t eating... I think she’s dehydrated…. I’m sorry for putting you through this Pika,” I’d say for the hundredth time.)

“She really wants to though.”

“Oh my God. Put your hand through the leash and hang on to her. You know how feral she gets when it’s dark out.”

The next thing I am aware of is Scott walking slowly back and forth in front of the tent. He was barefooted. In fact, all of him was bare. “Pika, here Pika,” he called quietly and desperately. 

I rolled out of bed and onto the grass. “What happened? What did you do?!” 

“It was like she tried to trick me. Then the leash slipped out of my hand.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to take the cat with you for a pee?!” I was incensed. Panicked. Bad Mommy feelings coursed through my veins. It was very dark out. I heard her trying to claw her way up the 6’ fence that enclosed the campsite on three sides. 

So, there we were, two naked idiots calling, “Pika, here kitty. Heeeere Pika. Come for treats. Want some Fancy Feast?” in soft, non-threatening, pleading voices. Fancy Feast is something she cannot resist, but still she didn’t come. I began to circle the tent slowly for the third time while Scott stood helplessly by the picnic table, imagining, I’m sure, how this was not going to go well for him if Pika “ran away to the wild” as I knew he would try to explain it later. 

“Here Pika. Heeere Pika. Come kitty….” I spotted her. She was almost buried under the tent. “Good kitty!” She let me pick her up and carry her back into the tent. Neither of us spoke to daddy for the rest of the night. 

The second time we lost her was in Iowa. We took a lot of time picking out the prettiest campsite, one up against a forest thick with trees and ferns and creeping vines. 

“We should put her on her leash and let her roam around,” Scott suggested. “She’d like that.” It was an extremely humid day. Knowing how uncomfortable she would be in either the tent or the car and too tired for discussion I said, “Okay.” 

Scott was on his knees inside the tent laying out the thermarests. He had his Crocs on. You know, those shoes that have holes in them so that all your dignity has a place to get out. Pika’s leash was secured on a tent stake in the grass. Scott started to back out of the tent. “Careful, the cat’s right behind you,” I warned. But he kept coming and all Pika could see were two big Crocs coming at her. She became frantic.

Flaying wildly, she wriggled, backwards, out of her harness, only possible because of all the weight she had lost coming cross country. She made a mad dash for the forest and was gone.

We looked at each other. “She’s gone for good,” I said at the same time Scott said, “It wasn’t my fault.” But, fully clothed, he picked up her leash and headed into the brush calling for the cat. I melted into a chair and knew I would stay in that spot in Wyoming forever so that I could be there when, if ever, she came looking for Fancy Feast. I hoped to God it would not always be so hot and humid.

Scott reappeared. “I can’t find her.”

“Well!” I grabbed the treats and entered the forest shaking her treat bag. Is that poison oak? It looks like poison oak… “Pika, here Pika….” Shake shake shake. “Tree-eats!” I went deeper. Jumbles of logs scrapped my legs and thorns grabbed hold of my T-shirt. It was incredibly hot and humid. Like a steam bath. I could feel my face burning up. Or was that the tears. Man I felt shitty. Thirty minutes passed. “Here Peeks…”

“Mew.”

Did I just hear her? If you knew her you’d know she has the softest voice of any cat ever.

“Pika?”

“Mew,” she whispered.

I kept calling, she kept answering. I was getting closer and closer, hotter and hotter. There! Scrunched up like a pangolin in a tight ball. She was under a thick clump of bushes surrounded by fallen tree limbs.

I knew I had to be patient or she would bolt. I lowered into a squat and called, shaking her treat bag and calling over and over. Ten minutes passed before she stood, stretched, and came cautiously toward me then stopped. I kept calling her, slowly crab-walking closer. God, my knees hurt. Sweat poured down my face. “Come kitty. Good kitty…” Closer and closer. Almost close enough to touch her. But then she started to turn away! I lunged enough to grab her tail. “Sorry Peeks!” I picked her up and kissed her on the head about thirty times. 

The look on Scott’s face when I emerged from the brush was the look of a man reprieved from a death sentence. I’m exaggerating of course, but not.

“I honestly do not know how we got her back. Guardian Angels working overtime for sure.” 

We put her INSIDE her carrier on top of the picnic table. Scott, worried about how overheated I looked, went to the camp shop for ice and a wet towel for my neck.

That night, exhausted, we three fell into deep sleeps. Until the ranger came to wake us at midnight to say, “Big storm coming. Flash flooding, 60 mile per hours winds and hail the size of quarters expected.” “Okay. Thanks,” we mumbled. We slept through it.

Finally, we arrived to Michigan and boarded the boat. Gosh she’s pretty. We got all settled in, had dinner and went to bed; Pika in her red bed and Scott and I in our comfy cozy berth.

“Oh my gosh. I never slept so well. Except when those fisher guys came at 5A.M. and started up their loud boat engines across from us.” I yawned and stretched, noticing that Pika’s bed was empty. 

“Where’s the cat?” 

“Isn’t she in her bed?”

She wasn’t in her bed. She wasn’t in the galley or the salon or steering station either. “Ugh. The noise of that boat engine must have scared her.”

Two hours later…

“The entire boat is only about 150 square feet of living space, so she has to be somewhere,” Scott said after we’d searched the engine compartment, the anchor compartment, the bilge, the lazarette storage, (which is outside on the back deck so that really was a stretch)… We’d searched everywhere. You hear of cats getting trapped in small places, like inside walls and stuff. Visions of hiring someone to dismantle the boat stomped in our heads. Then Scott said, “No way she could have squeezed in there, but look in the water tank compartment.”

I shined my head torch into the cupboard that holds the cold water tank. “Mew.”

“Oh my God. Come out kitty.” And she did. I promptly stuffed a pillow in the small gap. 

Besides, “Here kitty” there were words. Scott may have said “It’s the cat or me.” But I’m sure he didn’t.

All is well. The new Garmin and batteries are installed. The bimini is waterproofed. Pika is familiar with the boat and getting more accustom every day to the sounds that echo around a marina. She doesn’t even dive under the blanket when we start the engine any more.  I laid in a HUGE supply of Fancy Feast for Peeks, and beer for Scott. Green Eyes (yes, Pika’s eyes are green too) and Blue Eyes are happy.

I promise, my next update will be less “Mew” and more “Hoist the anchor, full steam ahead, the Great Cross Stitch awaits!”

Toot-toot!