Furry Friends Part 1: The Moo

Although all of our friends, family and strangers that we meet are interested in what we do as sailors and in our travels, our furry friends top the list of intrigue and we have found that our most asked questions are about our four legged crew members, Koa and Moo. So I will devote a couple of posts to them and answer some of the pressing questions that I know you all have. ;-)

When we bought the boat, we already had the pets and it was never even a discussion between us, just an assumption: if we go on the boat, so do they. Luckily, they were young enough and adaptable enough that it has never been a problem. Moo was the easy one, so we will dedicate this post to our feline crew.

Although he doesn't love sailing the high seas, he loves the outdoors and so he quickly decided that the boat life is not too shabby. We call him our sentry because we often find him prowling the deck, making the rounds searching for birds that dare to land on his floating home. He has the run of the boat and will run from bow to stern and back again over and over throughout the night. And much to our chagrin, he has made the canvas on our boat his lounge area. This is not optimal for us since it causes our canvas to sag, but it is old and in need of replacement anyway and there is no way to win the battle, so we let it be. He can usually be found hanging with his head down in between the dodger and bimini spying on us from above. Or his new favorite spot is on top of the mainsail cover, where he has an unobstructed view of the whole boat. He likes to have us in his sights though so usually he is hanging head down in a hatch on deck keeping an eye on everything down below.

His litter box is lashed down on the floor of the Vberth and he has claimed the entire Vberth for his own room. Since we don't often have guests, like many other cruisers, we have turned the forward cabin into our "garage" of sorts. We store all of the things that don't fit anywhere else up there. This includes extra food rations, wine, beer, pet food, cat litter, paper goods and our spinnaker...just to name a few things. Whenever I stow everything, I make sure to leave a blanket on top of a storage container available for Moo to use as his bed. Although it seems these days he just prefers to lay on the spinnaker...a true sailing kitty I guess.

For the most part, Moo stays on the boat, although he has fallen in three or four times. While at the dock is when we have had the problems with him. He will attempt to jump from the boat, over the netting on the lifelines and onto the dock. Most of the time he makes it, but there have been times when the wind will catch the boat suddenly changing the distance he has to travel and in he goes. After the first time, we invested in a large fishing net to scoop him out. While we have had to use the net twice, we is usually able to climb back up the pilings and make it back to the boat by himself. Good thing he has nine lives...

Typical to cats, he insists on laying right in the middle of whatever we are doing and he always settles close to wherever we happen to be at the moment. He loves small spaces and takes particular interest whenever I pull out one of our many bags.

He is outside to greet us whenever we come back from a dinghy trip and he is the first to greet new visitors who come to the boat. In his mind, everyone visits with the sole purpose of petting him. At one dock, he visited our neighbor on her boat for over a week before we even knew about it! She would feed him cheese and lunch meat and so he kept going back....she loved him!

He keeps us constantly entertained with his antics and for that, we are glad he is part of our crew!