All at Sea with Truffles Page 11

  As we got to the side of the ship I saw a group of several comfy wicker sofas with some of the food stewards standing by them holding trays of cool drinks and also little wet towels so that people could wipe their hot faces. “How thoughtful they are on this ship,” remarked Margaret as she and Sheila accepted a couple of glasses and sat down on one of the sofas. “Yes,” said Sheila. “After all that palaver I certainly need a rub down with a damp flannel!” They giggled. “Still,” she went on, “it wasn’t the ship’s fault and I don’t reckon we would have been in any trouble with the port authority either, as Truffles is travelling with all the right papers. They’re generally most polite here. I’ve been here loads of times and the officials are usually very friendly. I think that thickhead was just a proper bad-tempered old grump who’d got out of bed on the wrong side!” I didn’t recognise the terms ‘thickhead’ or ‘grump’, but they sounded unflattering so must have described that horrible human purrfectly! We sat for few more minutes. I noticed that the passengers who were returning to the other cruise ship parked nearby did not have the luxury of chairs, drinks and cooling towels to meet them on arrival. Some were casting looks of envy at us. Yes, this is the life, I thought, feeling superior again! No wonder Sheila raves about this particular cruise line!

  We climbed up the gangway, which seemed at a considerably steeper angle now. Once more we faced an inspection process. What a difference between our friendly crew officials and that man in the port, though! All smiles this time, with no glares. Sheila popped our cards into the machine and put her shopping onto the moving surface, where it passed smoothly through the magic tunnel. Margaret followed with her mound of bags and we all stepped through the archway without any incident and arrived back at the elevator meeting place. “See you this evening,” said Sheila as we parted company with Margaret, and a short time later we were back at our stateroom again.

  It was nice to be ‘home’ again after my exciting day ashore in a foreign country! I’d seen things I could never have imagined: the apes, the big rock, the long motor machine, plus all the hustle and bustle of the shops and coffee places where so many people co… con… conger… got together. I was definitely getting more ofan insight into human life! I was also coming to understand more and more each day why so many of you love cruising!

  I went out on the balcony and relieved myself in the litter box. “Phew,” said Sheila, following me out, “I’d better deal with that quickly before the room service steward arrives!” Job done (excuse the pun again!) she sat down while I lay in my usual corner. She was just in time, as seconds later a knock heralded the arrival of today’s canapés and she brought them outside. Also, another bottle of bubbly had appeared on the table, so she poured herself a glass from it. We sat peacefully nibbling at our treats (it was some tiny slithers of quails’ eggs for me). Suddenly Sheila looked up and said, “Oh, Truffles, look at that giant bird sitting over there - you’ve never seen a bird like that!” “Wanna bet?” I muttered. It was, of course, the same murderous-looking bird I’d had the run-in with earlier. “Isn’t he lovely?” she went on. “He’s called a Frigate Bird. I’ve seen some before on another cruise, but never here - I think it could have been off South America somewhere.” She stood up and went to the edge to get a closer look. Personally, I had no wish to see it any closer! “It’s a pity he won’t fly nearer,” she said, “but he’ll be frightened of getting too near to the ship.” If only you knew, I thought! As she stood there, the neighbours came out onto their balcony and Sheila started chatting to them. “Do you see that bird over there?” she said, pointing. They looked and the man said how wonderful it was to see it and that it was such a pity we never got them in England. Thank God for that, I thought! “Maybe it’s just as well,” said Sheila. “If Truffles saw one she’d probably have kittens!” They all burst into laughter. “No need to keep going on about it,” I grumbled under my breath. I was sick of hearing about that wretched bird!

  After a while the ship made its loud barking noise and we slowly started to move away from Gibraltar. The rock, the apes and the shops all disappeared from view and once more I could see nothing but the big blue C. I reclined and reflected on my exciting trip ashore. From what Sheila had said, I realised that I wouldn’t be going ashore any more. But she must have had good reason, so I guessed that she was thinking of my welfare as usual. To be honest, today had been exciting for me but also somewhat overwhelming. It had certainly been a once in a lifetime experience that I wouldn’t forget in a hurry!

  I heard Sheila ordering my dinner and, wondering what it would be, I went inside. She was sitting on the sofa, watching the moving-picture machine. She had changed her outer coverings and I saw that she was wearing her new sparkly purchases. “I’m going out a bit earlier this evening, Truffles,” she said. “I’m going to see the ice show.” I wondered what an ice show was. She had explained to me what a ‘show’ was - something on this ship where people dressed up and entertained the passengers - but how could one be made of ‘ice’? I couldn’t get my head round it. I remembered seeing ice at home last winter. Awful stuff - I hated it. I had woken up one morning and found that the green grass was covered with a thick layer of white and this ice stuff was all over the patio and the path that ran round the edge of the house. Sheila had opened the back door to let me out but, on seeing that everything within sight was entirely white, I lost my nerve and stayed exactly where I was. She coaxed me out and told me to be brave and go and try it. So I took a tentative step. OMG! It was cold to the paws! Brrrr! I took a couple more small steps and it felt all slippery. I quickly jumped over the pathway onto the white grass! Mistake! I sunk into its covering of white nearly up to my shoulders. What on earth was all this? I remembered some years earlier seeing a very thin smattering of white one day onthe grass, but it had disappeared by the evening. I turned around to see Sheila laughing at me (well, as you know, I don’t like to be laughed at and I was surprised to see her, who should know better, doing it) and I gave her a filthy look. “Sorry, Truffles,” she’d said, “but it’s so funny seeing you in the snow!” (So that’s what the white stuff was called!) It was okay for her - she has much longer legs than me. She wouldn’t have sunk into this snow stuff up to her shoulders! There was no way I was going out to do my ablutions in the freezing cold, and that was that - she had another thing coming if she thought otherwise. I darted back inside and that was the last time I went outside the house for a couple of weeks, until the snow and ice had disappeared!

  Remembering this, though, didn’t explain to me how she could be going to an ‘ice show’ here on the ship. But don’t go there, Truffles, I thought - it will all be beyond you! So I just sat and waited for my dinner to arrive with the smiley food steward, whose name, I had learnt, was Marcello.

  Dinner arrived and whatever was under the silver dome smelt very good. “‘Ow ees puzzy today?” smiled Marcello, as he placed the dish on the table. Sheila told him that we’d been ashore in Gibraltar and asked if he had managed to get some time off the ship, too. He said he had been too busy, but hoped to get off for a few hours when we reached some place called Florence. He patted me goodbye and left. I would have given him a purr, but my mouth was watering due to the tantalising smell of my dinner and I didn’t want to disgrace myself by dribbling all over the carpet! Sheila took off the dome to reveal some lamb cutlets. I licked my lips. She chopped them up into small pieces and put them in my dish. “Mmmm,” she said, “these look good. I might have lamb myself tonight!” But I’m getting the first taste, I thought, as I started to demolish my dinner. After a glance around to check that everything was neat and tidy as usual, Sheila left to go to the puzzling ice show and her lamb dinner.

  Much later she returned. I was sound sleep in my bed in the corner. Eduardo had been in earlier and had seen to everything in his usual efficient way, turning down the bed and replacing the towels and fruit and even the flowers this time, but though they were just as brightly colou
red the new flowers still didn’t have any butterflies on them for me! He also left a natty bag on the bed for Sheila. Another bag, I thought, she’ll be pleased. It was in nautical colours and had the ship’s name on it. As I looked and sniffed at it, Eduardo had said, “Tote bag, Truffles. Pleeze don’t scratch on it,” Ah, good, I thought - at last somebody has been helpful enough to tell me exactly what something is without my having to puzzle about it for ages. Now I know Sheila can carry her totes in it! Sheila was pleased to see the tote bag and said it would be very handy when she went ashore. She buckled my new leopard-print collar around my neck, which fortunately fitted, and then said, “Come on, it’s casino time, Truffles! I groaned and followed her.

  I lay beside her in the casino, trying, without success, to nod off in the wretched noisy place, and from the sound of her occasional loud squeaks she was enjoying herself and her machine was being kind to her! Suddenly I felt her rising from her seat and turning around. She was greeted by the hossifer she’d had coffee with the previous evening. He was accompanied by another hossifer - a taller man in a very grand white two-piece set of outer coverings, with what looked to me like bits of gold rope stuck on top of his shoulders and also ringing the end of his sleeves. The first hossifer was similarly dressed but more low key, with not nearly so much gold. He introduced the tall man to Sheila as the Master of the ship. They shook paws and then the Master bentdown and said to me, “Good evening Truffles, I’ve been told all about you. I do hope you are enjoying my ship. I am delighted to meet you. We have never had a cat on board before!” He stroked me and I pulled out all the stops and gave him my best Cheshire cat grin and a big purr. I realised that he must be a very important person. “This is the Captain, Truffles,” said Sheila. “He is in charge of the entire ship, so you must be on your best behaviour whenever you see him!” They all laughed. After a few more minutes chatting, the hossifers moved on and Sheila sat back down again. “Well, you were honoured there, Truffles,” she said. I preened myself - well, I thought so too, but there again, the Captain was lucky to meet me as well! After a bit more button pressing, the machine gave Sheila its little paper slip and we left the casino en route for the frothy coffee place and her late-night Amoretto coffee drink. I wondered if she was hoping that her hossifer might join her again, but he was nowhere to be seen - still with his big boss, I expect!

  In bed that night I started to recall all that had happened that day, but before I got very far I had fallen fast asleep and didn’t wake up again until the bright sun was streaming through the patio doors!

  Another sea day

  After we awoke, we both went onto the balcony - me to the litter box and her to lean out over the glass wall and breathe in the fresh air. As I sat on the box, I mused - it was so different here from the air we got at home. Sounds silly, I know; after all, air is air wherever you are and the Cornish air is well known for being healthy and fresh itself. But here it was kind of different – the ‘warming Mediterranean air’, as I’d heard people describe it when I’d been listening in to their conversations. Whatever it was, we’d not had such warm air at home for months, so I was going to make the most of it!

  After Sheila had finished her own ablutions, dressed herself and tidied up generally, she got me my breakfast, which today was creamed salmon pâté sprinkled with a few prawn crunchies. Nice! Then she went out for her own breakfast. I ate at a leisurely pace and then returned outside and lay down right by the glass wall overlooking the C. I marvelled at myself - who would have thought that only three days ago I would have been scared of going so close to the edge! I sat and watched the white froth that the ship made as it moved through the C. It was quite hy… hyp… hypn… fascinating and I was almost in a trance by the time Eduardo arrived. “‘Ello, Trufools,” he said, coming out and patting me on the head. “You are enjoying the big sun, yes?” Yes, I was. He stood alongside me for a moment and then shook his head, saying he must get on. I heard him carrying out the daily sheet changing and going over the carpet with the machine that I just hate. Sheila has one at home and it sounds like a colony of angry wasps fighting when she switches it on. She walks up and down the rooms with it, doing I don’t know what - at the end of it all nothing looks any different to me! A simply pointless exercise, as far as I’m concerned. So why she and Eduardo are so keen on dragging these machines about beats me!

  Later on, Sheila reappeared and she was carrying a bag. Oh dear, she’s been down to the shops again, I thought, giving more of her money away! I don’t know what she had bought this time, because she never showed me and just put the bag away in a cupboard. She got out my nautical collar and clipped on the lead. “Come on, we’ll go up on deck and sit for a while,” she said. “I might read my library book or people watch.” We followed the usual route via the elevators and arrived at the deck with all the water pools and sun chairs on it, not the grassy deck above. It was heaving with people sunbathing, but Sheila was lucky and found a low chair to lie on. I sat half underneath it. A sickly smell wafted down to me. Yuk! Looking up, I could see that she was smearing some oily-looking stuff from a little bottle onto her face and arms. What’s she doing that for? I wondered. I wouldn’t like my fur to get all clogged up with oil. Still, it was nothing to do with me, so I settled down again and, thankfully, not very long afterwards the offensive smell soon di… dis… disp… went away. We sat there drowsing in the sunshine, with Sheila making the usual replies to comments from passers-by about seeing me on board. I began to get a little fed up with all the pats on the head from so many sweaty paws!

  Suddenly a huge shadow blotted out the sun. Surely it wasn’t that vile bird again? I sat up. Thank goodness it wasn’t! The people next to us also sat up, the drone of their chattering dying away. A huge lady human - the biggest and fattest I’d ever seen - came waddling past us in the direction of the water pool. “Crikey,” gasped Sheila, “that must be the woman Dianne at the table nicknamed Mrs Golightly!” She stared at Mrs Golightly in a bemused fashion. I drew back under the chair a bit more - I would have been crushed if this monster human had stepped on me. “Good God,” said the man sitting by us, “she’s at least three times the size of my mother-in-law, and that’s saying something!” We all watched in awe as Mrs Golightly wobbled on towards the pool. She was almost wearing a brief two-piece outfit, like you humans wear for your unpleasant pastime of swimming, and that outfit certainly left little to the imagination! It hardly reached over all her lumps of fat. I remembered once seeing a picture of an enormous white person that looked as if it was made out of balloons, advertising those things that you put on the wheels of your motor machines. Well, to my mind she looked like that! Mrs Golightly seemed completely ob… obl… obliv… unaware of the stir she was causing. She didn’t seem to notice the silence; she just kept lumbering on. Eventually she arrived at the water pool. There were only five or six young people in it, and when they caught sight of her they panicked and all jumped out of the pool, some crying and the others laughing hysterically. They rushed to their respective mothers.

  Mrs Golightly, taking no notice of anybody whatsoever, plonked herself down on the edge of the pool and slithered into the water. Immediately, a great gush of water overflowed from the pool and the people sitting in the chairs close by moved back a bit smartish so they wouldn’t get wet. She just sat there in the water as if nobody else was around. Well, I suppose she was happy. Certainly she was making most of the people watching happy, as I could hear lots of giggling. I noticed that quite a lot of people were pointing their little talking machines or picture-making machines in her direction - obviously recording her posterior for posterity!