Mogsie at 22, sunning herself on the farm, she died when she was 23, a truely amazing cat.
“Oh, Mike,” said Meme over the phone from Eileen’s, the owner of the yacht Mabuji Mahi’s house in Johannesburg. “There is such an adorable African Wildcat kitten here; that has adopted me.” She crooned.
I am allergic to cats but for a reason which does not make sense, I said we should keep him. I have always had dogs and actually had a strong dislike for cats. They made me itch and my eyes would water if a cat was anywhere near me. Meme had another old African Wild cat called Mogsie that lived on a farm in the Cape Province in South Africa and when we last visited the farm Mogsie crept up onto my chest one night and licked my eye-ball with her raspy tongue. I thought it would swell up but nothing happened. Our theory is that I am not allergic to wild cats only domestic cats. I now believe that should I be attacked by a lion I won’t sneeze or break out in a rash. Based on that theory we decided to adopt the kitten which we later called Theraputix or TP for short. He got that name because he proved to be amazing therapy when any one of us was depressed or sick and we are fans of Asterix and Oberlix comic books.
TP was quite sickly when Meme got him as he was the runt of the litter but she soon nursed him to good health. He became TWO STRAWS’ boat cat and full-time entertainment for us.
He loved to ride in the dingy but for a short spell only and then would face towards the yacht and if you did not grab him he would prepare to jump in the water to swim back to the yacht. When I took him to the sand bank which was about 30 meters from the boat, he would swim back to the boat and climb up a net that we had hanging over the side for him. On his swim back one time he was dive bombed by sea gulls much to his disgust.
It was quite funny how he would stand on the bow of the dingy with all four paws tight together and facing ahead, sway back wards and forwards with the rowing motion. If I dug the oars in and stopped suddenly he would topple over into the water with a squawk and scramble back on board almost without getting wet. Cats don’t like water. When we swam around the boat even in the tropical waters of Northern Madagascar he would be very curious and stare at us with his big green eyes, sniff our salty wet fingers with disdain as if to say, “You guys are nuts.”
Paul the fisherman, yes he did release it. The bow of his canoe in the middle right.
He could never resist hopping on board a dingy that came alongside the yacht. No matter whose boat it was. Paul came alongside with his plastic canoe and TP jumped onto the bow of the canoe and Paul slowly paddled away from TWO STRAWS. You could see from TP’s tail that he was not happy to be so close to the water and so far from the yacht. As Paul started steering back to the yacht we all watched with amusement as TP did his swaying act on the sharp bow of the canoe.
His timing and angle of elevation was way out as he crouched to leap from the canoe to the much higher deck of our catamaran. Some body said, “Not yet TP, not yet.”
There was a thump, squawk and a splash followed by raucous laughter from us and then we all rushed to his rescue and to pacify him. He always indicated his embarrassment if we laughed at him by slinking away to hide from us. We eventually tried to laugh as quietly as possible so as not to hurt his pride.
TP and her feather duster “Bird”
He and I used to play tag and I would shout ‘catch a cat’ and run off across the deck and he would chase me and bat my foot, then turn and run for me to chase him. The one time he leaped across the deck like a mighty leopard and landed on the up turned dingy. Unfortunately the hull of the dingy was wet and slippery and he did a four-legged split landing flat on his belly. We all broke down laughing as he crept over the edge and under the dingy after glaring back at us with his huge indignant green eyes. He stayed hidden for at least a half hour.
I had a tense moment with him one afternoon when we were alone on board TWO STRAWS. I had been doing some woodwork on board and as I stopped the jig saw I heard a continuous squealing noise from the port aft bunk. TP had got his right paw hooked up in the clothing net. It was a very tightly tangled knot around his tiny paw and he was highly traumatized. Cutting him loose with my seaman’s knife was like wrestling with an animated rose-bush.
Tp ready to board after his morning “row”. Everyone else walked thier dog, we rowed our cat.
He was such a precious ship mate. Meme went off to help friends sail their yacht to Durban and left TP and I in Dar Es Salaam at anchor on TWO STRAWS.
Tanzania is the worst place on earth for malaria and I was being a bit silly and did not put up a mosquito net over my bunk which I regretted two weeks later. The mozzies gathered together above me like a cloud and TP jumped up on the ledge and started batting them like King Kong in New York.
During that same period I serviced Thumper the little diesel engine and left the dirty black old engine oil in a bucket on deck for disposal the next day. During the night I felt TP’s presence on the bunk and lifted the mosquito net to let him onto the bed. In my half asleep state I gave him a hug and he walked across my chest and settled down across the top of my head as he usually does. It was only after dawn when I awoke and noticed black spots before my eyes. They were also all over the bedding and my shirt, the pillow and my head and the deck had a polka dot finish. Meme found it hilarious of course when I told her about it.
Tp choosing his munchies
Meme was growing hydroponic vegetables for us on the boat, Tp started to eat them, when he started eating the lettuce, chives and basil, we decided that he needed grass. Meme spotted a huge clump on the roadside in Nosy Be and hauled it out. When she got to the boat she threw it on deck in front of TP, who came to greet our dinghy as usual. Half an hour later he was still rolling in it in ecstasy. Meme decided to plant it in a hydroponic pot and as she picked it up, TP followed her pitifully, crying all the way. He was so ecstatic when she planted it and did not throw it away.
Tp and his grass, he would sit for hours nuzzling it
The most dramatic event for TP on our catamaran TWO STRAWS was when he was captured by feline eating natives of southern Madagascar.
We left Durban in a strong south-westerly wind and headed straight across the current in the direction of southern Madagascar.
Rene, (Darleen) our super chef.
Our gaff rigged cutter Wharram catamaran was heavily laden with the Duk family on board and their new member TP cat. Meme, Paul, Rene and I became the imaginary Duk family when attempting to deliver the ill-fated Prout catamaran “THYME” from the Canary Islands to Durban. We made up an ongoing sit-com on board to entertain ourselves. Each day we would invent and enact the activities of myself who became Daryl Duk, and Paul was my brother Daryl with Meme and Rene being both Darleen Duk our sisters. Grand papy Duk and granny Duk were their too but only in our heads. They of course were also Daryl and Darleen and had arrived in America with their parents Daryl and Darleen Duke but ‘he aint done no schoolin’ and Duke became Duk when he filled in the immigration papers and ran out of ink. After five weeks at sea these light-hearted events tend to ease the tension that builds up between four people on a boat 11 mtr by 5 mtr in the middle of the ocean.
TWO STRAWS excelled in true Wharram fashion with the wind mainly on the beam we encountered some huge waves and gale-force winds. After about ten days at sea we arrived at Fanemotra Bay which is a small corral lined cove on the south-western shore of Madagascar and proceeded to anchor as darkness fell and soon was pitch dark.
Just as we were settling down for the night, there was a bump against the boat towards the stern and a dugout canoe appeared a few seconds later on our forward starboard side. There was an old man and woman on board. The woman was holding something tightly between her legs under the seat. They had come to barter with us but we told them that we may be interested in doing business in the morning and asked them to leave, which they did.
We could smell the fires ashore but it was a star and moon less night and we could not even see the shore line.
Paul was also allergic to cats and generally did not like them but it was quite obvious that TP had wormed his way into Paul’s heart as he was the first to notice that our cat was missing. We searched all over for him but he was definitely not on board. Knowing that Madagascan natives of the south eat cats, we started shouting vengeance across the water. Meme shouted in French that we shall be coming in the morning to get even. We did quite a bit of praying for our TP cat
The smell of meat being cooked ashore really upset us and just before midnight we all lay down to try to get some sleep. At about midnight we felt a slight bump against the boat and then in walked Theraputix with his tail held high, as if he had never been away. We were overjoyed. The Duk family were dancing around the deck totally ecstatic. Although he was unharmed you could smell the wood fire on his fur. The next day when he spotted a dugout coming towards our boat, he shot down below and had to be coaxed out of hiding. Meme held him in her arms and pointed to the same couple on their dugout he immediately bolted down below again. From then on he was obviously wary of what dingy he would inspect. Being a cat he would have seen them before we did and probably hopped onto their dugout to inspect it, as he usually does with friends of ours. They must have considered him to be part of our food stock and a sort of left over for them to enjoy. They may have had second thoughts after our protest demonstration and decided that it would be prudent to return him that same night. Perhaps the other people in the village or the Chief of the village told them to take him back to us. It would have been a disastrous start to our Madagascar cruise knowing that TP had been eaten by the locals. TP the cat went ashore in Madagascar on an adventure before any of us did.
Tp in the ultimate standoff
I must appologise for the lack of pictures today. The internet here is unfortuanately steam driven. I will try to post the pics later.
The land of “Manyana”, tried all day yesterday but today it works….