The Cruising Kitty

by Onyx Blackwell

I'll tell you, I surely do wear a lot of hats around here. Aside from being the non-people's and little people's categories editor, I also am chief nightime security officer with primary responsibility for the midnight to daylight anchor watch, main fish and game spotter (and post-fish clean up officer), the officer on deck whenever my crew is on single-handed watch, and of course tester of all sleeping accomodations. They tell me that my most important job is topping off the cruising kitty but I still don't know what that means. I thought I was the cruising kitty. I wish my peoples would just tell it like it is.

I was going to start by telling you that I was six weeks old when I started sailing, and that I got my sealegs right away (whatever they are). But there's too much that's happened since then. I'll just have to write my life story down and see if you all want to read about it. There are so many stories though, like the time Seamus came to visit, and when my peoples got a bigger boat that didn't work too well. They had to keep tearing up the floorboards and I couldn't get to my food and they kept waking me up with all the racket. Boy did I get mad! I gave them a piece of my mind, too. I bet they won't forget that too soon. Of course, it all started a couple of lives ago so I'm not sure if I can tell the whole story.

You see, I'm really comfortable on a boat but when it comes to the land life, I just don't really know what to do with myself besides sleep. On a boat, there's always something to do, something going on. I must say that taking the launch out to the boat is not my favorite part. It goes too fast. I like making haste slowly. At least then I can see everything, including all those fish swimming below us. That's really cool. Sometimes I think about jumping in and swimming with them but it just looks too wet. Oops, got off track.

So anyway, I'm going to write some of my stories down and share them with you. I hope your non-people like them and send me lots of their stories, too. Here's my favorite quote in closing...

"Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim swim swim."

- Dory, my hero, in Finding Nemo