The new life of Oliver

Oliver must have realized that a big change was coming when his house started to get progressively empty. He would just sit there with a puzzled expression looking at us moving thing after thing, big and small. Until we just left, and he remained behind in a completely empty house. If that was shocking, the next thing must have been even more: the new owners, our neighbors, moved in, pets and all. They graciously accepted to take care of our cat while we moved cross country and settled in our new, floating home. Oliver was petted, fed, defleed and very well taken care of. Still, he figured out it was not his place anymore, and soon started to sleep outside.

A few weeks later we picked Oliver up, and we put him through what was without a doubt the most horrifying experience of his long existence. The hour-long drive to the airport was already longer than any of his previous car trips. When going through airport security, they asked us to remove him from his carrier in order to pass the carrier through the scanner. The open space and all the noise terrified him, with bad consequences for Kathy, who had to held Oliver tightly to prevent him from running away. After that it was a six-hour flight, a taxi ride, a night in a strange place (a standard hotel for us humans), a three-hour rental car ride, a long stop at the grocery store, and a dinghy ride to the boat.

Once aboard and freed from the carrier, he hid immediately in the tightest spot he could find. I wouldn’t have guessed he could actually fit in there, but the tightest he was, the safer he felt. We haven’t seen him in that spot lately, which is a sign that he’s getting braver in this new environment. Or gaining weight.

After a couple of days he started to cautiously explore every crevice on the boat, which helped getting rid of the last bits of fiberglass dust. He’d come out all white from the guts of the boat, a feline duster making a contribution to the house domestic chores. His only contribution, I should add, other than eating a fly once.

He’s slowly getting used to a cruising life, but as far as we know, Oliver has left the boat by himself only once. In Delaware, Kathy found him exploring the motor boat docked behind us. I don’t know what he saw in there, but he hasn’t tried to leave Ñandú since then.

When he’s not sleeping he’s asking for food, or doing his daily round on the deck, around the cockpit enclosure. He tolerates sailing in mild conditions, but he abhors rough sailing or anything that involves turning the engines on. On those occasions he hides in our bed, under the sheets, leaving a lovely trail of hair and litter in our most sacred space. He occasionally comes out to perform his biological functions, and to make it very clear that he’s not happy. With his loud and most annoying meowing he shouts “you idiots are ruining my life!” on his way back to the bed. Our bed.

And then there’s the issue with the litter box on those rough conditions. I can’t blame him, though, since I know from my own experience that it’s not easy to fully evacuate when the ground is not steady, even for me having the option of sitting down. Last time Oliver decided to make it only half way inside the litter box. His load fell indeed outside. And I’m talking about solid load. I guess he didn’t get the message right: the point is to think outside the box, not to shit outside the box. I need to find a better solution. Perhaps a gimballed litter box? Maybe not.

Poor guy anyway. Just when he was accepting and even occasionally enjoying his new life, we put him again in his carrier and drove him more than four hours in a rental car to Camp Kitty, a boarding facility, where we left him for almost two weeks while we flew to California. Now the whole family is back on the boat and he’s never been happier to be this close to water.