All at Sea with Truffles Read online

  “Right, Truffles,” she said, “we’re nearly there now! Let’s go!” Waving goodbye to the two fo… foto… fotog... picture takers, we set off again. By now, I was beginning to get a little paw-sore, so I was looking forward to the moment when we could sit down again and I could have a long-overdue nap. I always try to nap for 22 hours out of every 24, but somehow today I felt that wasn’t going to happen!

  Well, the next obstacle we faced was a rather frightening - tome - kind of staircase, which seemed to be moving. I looked closely at it and, yes, it was definitely moving! How very odd - the one we have at home doesn’t move. I began to feel as if I was in some kind of weird dream. In just one morning I had seen so many things that I could never have imagined. Still, I pulled myself together. I had wanted to come on this trip to see why Sheila was so addicted to cruising, so I mustn’t be a wimp and let myself be scared merely by the unknown. Cats do not admit to being scared even if they are; it’s not in our nature. In any case, if cruising was scary, then nobody would do it. After these sensible thoughts had run through my mind I felt suddenly better. This was an adventure for me and I would treat it as such - and, what’s more, I would enjoy it!

  So I made a leap towards the moving staircase, only to be jerked back on the lead by Sheila and told that I had to be carried on it! I felt quite humiliated - why couldn’t I walk on it like everyone else? Oh well, not to worry - just so long as she doesn’t drop me! In a few moments we reached the top of this moving edifice, and I must say that whilst being carried I did have the chance to look around and back down the stairway, and the size of the hall we had come through seemed absolutely enormous. Once more, I had to admit to myself that I was pleased to be attached to Sheila on my lead - I never thought I would say that - as I would have dreaded getting lost around these parts. It was all so very different from Cornwall!

  Surely we must be nearly there now, I thought. We appeared to be in a covered pathway and we carried on walking, and walking, and walking. The path seemed to zigzag and we also appeared to be climbing. To me, it just seemed to make the journey longer and, given the option, I would have simply climbed up vertically to reach the eventual space where the path finished!

  Sheila slowed her pace, as several fellow travellers had halted in front of us. They were all dragging along their cases on wheels, just like her, only they didn’t have any cats accompanying them. Those nearest to us smiled and made flattering comments about me to Sheila. How pleasant, I thought - if everyone we met on the cruise ship was going to be like that, the experience would certainly exceed my expectations! I was definitely on a high right now, that’s for sure.

  We gradually moved forward and then faced two more smartly dressed, smiling officials, who were manning another curious machine, which interestingly was making regular dinging or pinging noises - not so much like a squeezed mouse, but more the sound of Sheila tapping a spoon against my dinner bowl when I am summoned in for a meal. Again, a pleasing sound to a cat’s ear! We stepped up to the machine and Sheila peered into a tiny aperture, whereupon a ping sounded. The official gestured that she should hold me up to the opening as well, so she did so, and I got a ping too. What fun! Now we were only a few steps away from the doorway that allowed us entrance to the ship itself - at last!

  We carried on our way, and once on board we were met by a long line of yet more smartly dressed and smiling humans - both men and lady humans this time - and they were holding trays in their paws with lots of those glasses of bubbly liquid that you all love to drink. Sheila was no exception. She took a glass, somehow managing to hold it, plus her bag, her case on wheels and my lead, and we moved on a little to where a group of other newly arrived passengers were sitting chatting and emptying their glasses. We had arrived - our cruise was about to begin!

  By the way, Sheila told me later on that, despite my thinking that it seemed as if it had taken half a day to get on board, leaving Tony’s motor machine to receiving the glass of bubbly had actually only taken about fifteen minutes - amazing! This cruise line was just so well organised she said. I suppose it had seemed much longer to me because it was all so new and bewildering and I hadn’t known what to expect.

  I sat down gratefully whilst Sheila found herself a comfy chair and deposited her case and bag beside her. She soon started talking to the people around her, and as they all seemed to be staring at me I assumed I was the topic of conversation. And quite rightly so - I enjoy being the centre of attention, as you will have gathered by now! I didn’t bother to try to eavesdrop, as I was much too interested in looking at what was going on all around me. More and more passengers were arriving and the seating area in the large gathering place of the ship - the centrium, I believe it is called - was filling up. Ship people, smartly dressed in trendy nautical uniforms, were scurrying about refilling their trays with bubbly, and the more the passengers drank it, the more they smiled and laughed - there were obviously going to be a lot of happy bunnies on this cruise! Sheila would be no exception, I was sure of that - after only two glasses of the stuff she was already chattering away avidly with the people next to her, paws waving excitedly and with a big smile on her face.

  A little later her new companions said they were going to have something to eat and asked if we would care to join them. However, Sheila looked ruefully down at me and replied that, although she would have loved to go with them, she could not go to the eating area because she couldn’t take me in there. Whoops! Oh dear, well, I was sorry about that, but then she had known that would be the case before we came on the ship. Her new-found friends said they understood and they all agreed to meet up later that evening. They patted me on the head, I gave the appropriate polite purr in return, and then off they went.

  I felt a bit bad that Sheila was left behind, but surely she wasn’t starving after her toasted tea and cake with Tony earlier, and she would only miss out on this one initial meal. Throughout the rest of the cruise she would eat in one or other of the many food places on board and I would dine in solitary splendour in our stateroom. As she usually moans on her return home from a cruise that she has put on so much extra weight, with the prospect of fourteen days of gas… gast… gastro… wonderful food ahead, I don’t think she was particularly upset about not eating for just a few hours more!

  Up came another smiley, handsome young ship person, offering yet another glass of bubbly to Sheila, but to my astonishment she refused it, saying that it was time for us to go and find our stateroom and get settled in before lifeboat drill. Lifeboat drill? What’s that? I wondered. I was having to come to terms with so many new things today, my mind could hardly take it all in! Still, I am always ready for a challenge, and somehow I thought that this cruise was certainly going to be that!

  Arriving at our stateroom

  Well, the next challenge faced me sooner than I had expected! Sheila gathered up the bags and said, “Right, Truffles, onwards and upwards.” Funny thing to say, I thought, but what she said actually turned out to be quite appropriate. We walked towards a space that had four pairs of shiny, silvery doors on one side facing another four pairs of glass doors on the other. I have never really understood about your stuff called glass - first you see it, then you don’t. Although there seems to be nothing there, when you go to walk through it, you can’t. It’s hard. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. If you can’t see it, how does it stop you going through it? It’s a proper mystery to me, I can tell you. At home I sit indoors on the mat in front of a large bit of it that slides to and fro at the side of our sitting room. It allows the sun to shine its rays through it, so why can’t I go through it as well? I give up! But, whatever, it’s my favourite spot in the entire house, because the sun makes it lovely and warm. I do enjoy sitting there watching the birds in our garden, but it can be very frustrating when I see one not three metres away from the other side of this in… inv… invis… glass stuff that I cannot get through! Well, I digress again...

 
We waited with several other passengers by these strange doors and from time to time they would slide to one side, revealing a small cave. A few people would get in and subsequently disappear. Moments later the doors would open again and the people would get out looking quite different. I began to get a bit nervous - what did it all mean? What if Sheilaput me in there and I came out having been turned into a dog or something? What if? What if? Sheila saw that I was bracing myself and digging my claws into the thick carpeting. “No need to be frightened. These things are very useful, Truffles,” she said. “They can transport us up and down to different places without our having to walk and get tired. They are called lifts... No,” she corrected herself, “they are called elevators on this ship.” Despite her assurances, though, I still felt full of trepidation, as everyone seemed to be transformed magically after entering into these caves.

  Moments later, one of the glass pairs of doors slid apart and Sheila marched in, dragging, I don’t mind telling you, a reluctant Truffles behind her. I felt a panic attack coming on. “Calm down,” said Sheila, and she pressed one of an array of ill… illu… illumi… lit-up buttons on the wall. Immediately, a ghostly female voice from nowhere said, “Doors closing.” And they did! I looked around and couldn’t see another female human. Where had the voice come from? I was beginning to think I was hallucinating (ha, that got you, didn’t it? A big word that I DO know!) I examined myself, but I still looked like Truffles - I didn’t look like a dog, thank goodness! I could feel a kind of movement in our cave and as I glanced behind me, away from the doors, my heart leapt into my mouth - we appeared to be perched on air! The entire wall was made of glass and as we travelled upwards I could look down through it, and we seemed to be passing through lots of different layers of rooms. It’s very difficult to describe what I saw, readers, so you will have to use your own imaginations! Just a few seconds later, I was startled by the mysterious unseen female human announcing, “Deck ten - doors opening.” Suddenly the doors slid open and I jumped out, almost jerking the lead out of Sheila’s hand. Thank goodness we had arrived at wherever we were going! I hadn’t enjoyed that experience very much. It was all too confusing. “Calm down, Truffles,” Sheila said, “we’re nearly there now. You’ve done very well - it’s been a long journey for you and very strange, so you’ve coped admirably. I’m proud of you.” And she gave me a lovely pat. Immediately I began to feel better.

  More walking, this time along a seemingly never-ending passageway, all beautifully carpeted. My paws sank deeply into it - it felt most relaxing. On either side of this passageway were yet more doors. I was amazed at all the doors I had seen on this ship - hundreds and hundreds of them, if not thousands. What lay behind them? All these staterooms Sheila had told me all about? I wondered which one was ours. Sheila’s pace was slowing - it was a very, very long corridor! Eventually we arrived right at the end of it - we could go no further. It opened out onto another row of ten doors spread right across the width of the ship. “We’re right at the stern now, Truffles,” she said, stopping in front of stateroom number 1204. We had arrived at our destination. Yippee!

  She reached into her pocket – I have always thought a pocket would be a useful accessory, but unfortunately my one-piece fur catsuit does not have any. She brought out the little card that she had been handed at the embarkation desk - my, that did seem a long time ago now - and pushed it into the door. There was another pinging noise - ooh, a mouse perhaps? No, just my over- vivid imagination! She pressed a lever on the door and it opened. In we went. The door closed behind us and we both sighed with pleasure. Our cruise was really beginning now!

  Around our stateroom

  Sheila unclipped my lead, dropped her bags to the ground and flopped down onto a comfy-looking leather sofa with some squishy cushions. I made a mental note to try them out later! I stood and looked around me. Well, I thought, this is rather like a combination of our sitting room and Sheila’s bedroom at home: kind of an ‘all-in-one apartment’ - how convenient! Apart from the sofa, there was a long, low table with a shiny, silvery bucket on it, holding a large bottle of the bubbly stuff she had been drinking earlier. I hoped she wasn’t going to drink all of that now - heaven knows the state she would get into! As I wrote at the beginning of all this, I’m afraid as a cat I strongly disapprove of the way sometimes you humans drink far too many of these sickly-smelling, coloured liquids, which in my opinion are just not healthy! Still, I have to admit that I have never seen Sheila under the weather, so I presume she has the sense not to overindulge. A little of what you fancy does you good is what I say, and I guess she thinks that way too. Next to the bottle were a couple of glass drinking bowls and another much bigger container (dear readers, was I ever going to escape from glass things on this ship?!) containing flowers. Well, that made me feel nice and really at home; we have lots of flowers in our garden. I like flowers - not particularly because of the flowers themselves, but you get butterflies sitting on them in the summer and they are a delight to play with and snack on. There was also a bowl of fruit (those sweet things that are revolting to we cats!) and lying beside it were several of those printed paper sheets you humans like to read, plus some sort of gadget with rows of square buttons on it.

  My gaze continued around the room. I could see a very large and comfy-looking bed with compartments on the wall above it and to the sides where, no doubt, Sheila would be stashing away her various paw carriers (sorry - handbags!) and all the other paraphernalia she had brought with her; that is - I had a sudden uneasy thought - if our luggage did indeed ever arrive, particularly my own collars, bed and litter tray, etc. Better not think too much about that last item, I decided, or I might want to use it before it arrived! There was a unit of drawers with some sort of cupboards underneath it, then some more drawers and, next to those, a single drawer that looked, to me, to be suspended in mid-air, a bit like a table with no legs, with a chair set underneath it. I could see what looked like a kettle and drinking bowls - sorry again, I must remember you call them cups or glasses - standing on the top, together with another container of flowers. I peered at them but could see no butterflies - pity. When Sheila opened the single drawer she saw that there was a fur dryer in it. Another mysterious accessory you humans like looking at - called a m… mi… mir… looking glass was above. On the wall above the main block of drawers was a large, flat moving-picture machine like the one we have at home that stupefies Sheila for several hours every night, and there was yet another large double cupboard that went from the floor to the roof on the wall opposite. Just past that was another door that Sheila hadn’t opened yet. At the same time as I noticed that door, she DID go and open it and went in! I followed her, curious...

  It was a room rather like the one at home in which she carries out her daily ablutions, and I could see that it had a water bowl against the wall in which she was washing her paws. This bowl was set in a unit of more drawers and cupboards of various sizes, and almost the entire wall was made of that glass you can look into. Fitted above this looking glass was a bank of small lights, and I noticed later in the cruise that even if the main lights in the ablution room were switched off there was always a low glow coming from these lights. Standing by the wash bowl was yet another container of flowers - unfortunately still with no accompanying butterflies - and several small bottles and containers. Set inside this room was another little room where I could see some kind of silver-coloured pipe with a bulbous end hanging down from its roof. A panel with buttons, rather like the one we’d seen in the elevator earlier, sat beside the pipe. I think you call this apparatus a shower. Horrible things - all full of water! Like the water box I could see round the corner. I often wonder why you humans use a water box instead of a litter box. Having a litter box to scratch about in gives most cats an outlet for their natural covering-up instinct. Perhaps humans don’t care about covering up their waste - but then I’ve always been of the opinion that there is no creature as clean as a cat. We wash ourselves co
untless times each day from top to toe, particularly behind the ears, and the process also helps in awkward moments when perhaps you are deciding on your next move or whatever. There is an old cat saying: when in doubt, lick bottom. But, I’m digressing again! I noticed that on the final wall of this little ablution room were several rails with some lovely thick and fluffy body-drying rags hanging on them. They’d be nice to flex my claws on, I thought (Sheila doesn’t let me do that on hers at home) - and I proceeded to do just that! Oh dear - big mistake! “DON’T do that, Truffles,” Sheila snapped, flapping her paw at me in a threatening manner. “Okay, okay, keep your fur on,” I muttered under my breath and slunk back into the main stateroom.

  Anyway, it all certainly seemed like a home from home. Every amenity you could wish for! I decided that we would be very comfortable living here for a while. Suddenly there was a knock at the main door. I dived behind the bed.

  It was the porter, who had come to tell us that our luggage had arrived outside. Phew - relief all round! Sheila dragged it into the room. “Now, Truffles,” she said, “we’ll sort you out first.” I nodded - it was good to see that even luxuriating here she still remembered that she is my human carer first of all and, yes, of course her duties to me must come before everything else. That’s what it said in her original contract of employment, and over the years I have made sure that she has stuck by my rules!

  Sheila picked up my travel bag and shook out my fluffy bed, which she had managed to squash into it - one less thing to carry. “Now, where shall we put this?” she pondered. “Ah yes, here,” and she put it down in a corner between her bed and some large patio doors (yes, more glass!) that I hadn’t noticed when we’d first come in. Perhaps there was a garden outside like at home and I would be able to do some bird watching. Good! Exotic birds perhaps! I looked through but couldn’t see any sign of green. She slid open the door and went out, so I followed and stood in the doorway. I could see a nice table and two low-lying chairs, but there was no grass. There was quite a decent-sized enclosed area of wood decking (appropriate for a ship, I suppose!) with a fairly low, to you humans, but high to me, glass - yes, it had to be glass - wall topped by a wooden rail in front. On either side of this space were high walls of thicker, more cloudy glass, which I assumed was to keep us away from the neighbours in the staterooms on either side. This is similar to how we are partitioned off at home - and very glad I am to have it that way,as next door to us we have two very noisy and annoying little dogs and six cats, all much larger than me, so they can be quite in… int… intimi… scary at times! Well, I thought, it will be nice to sit out here in the fresh air - our own private space.