My aunt has a crew of about a dozen on his fishing boat, fishing offshore. He told me the story of a group of cats who “worked” on the boat, which I found very interesting, and I put together a record to share with you.
Initially, there were no cats on his boat, but the crew had no peace because of the rats, stealing Food, and making noise in the middle of the night. So one Time before going to sea, my aunt waited for an opportunity to kidnap a wild cat on the dock, and from then on it was unstoppable.
Whether the wild cat is willing to work on the ship is not available. Anyway, once the ship is off shore, surrounded by the vast ocean, the wild cat thus became a boat cat.
The Life of a boat cat is comfortable, it has a large piece of land – the deck and cabin, it comes and goes as it pleases.
During the day, it waits for the nets to close, and countless live fish flopping on the deck, it rushes to take the fattest one, and disappears on the deck in the blink of an eye; at night, it performs the work of a ship’s cat, wandering in the cabin of the roaring machines, and rides the night to scare the rats around, scaring those originally arrogant rats not to squeak.
But the ship cat will not live on the ship for a long time. Every time the ship docks, the crew will go Home to rest and the fishing boat will be refurbished, so the boat cat without fresh fish to eat will return to the shore and continue its life as a wild cat.
Some boat cats recognize the crew after many times of cooperation, and every time the crew returns to the boat, it will follow them on their own accord and take the initiative to work on the boat. There are also some boat cats who do not like to go to sea and flee after the ship docks, preferring to turn over the garbage cans themselves, rather than fresh fish and mice.
One of the boat cats, let’s call it the supervisor. It is an arrogant cat by nature, very arrogant.
Once the supervisor cat came to the ship, it swaggered around the environment, and finally it saw the captain’s room on the second floor of the cabin with a wide view and settled here. Whenever the crew was busy on the deck, he would sit by the helm and look down on them from above, as if he was a slave master and the crew were his slaves, responsible for fishing for him.
The overseer cat rarely came downstairs, and only when it was hungry would it condescend to the deck and take the fresh fish that had just come online.
It is said that the supervisor cat is also very snobbish, it does not please the ordinary crew members, but only gets along well with the captain, first mate and other people, and with this interpersonal relationship, the supervisor cat has some face on board.
I think, of course, it has a reason to be arrogant, the supervisor cat has a whole ship, a dozen employees to provide it with fresh fish, countless rats for its pleasure, there are not many wild cats in the world so prestigious, it is the king of the world!
The story of another boat cat is somewhat amazing, it touches the porcelain.
After several collaborations, the bumper cat and my aunt got acquainted, it guarded near the warehouse where the fishing gear was located, when the crew returned to pick up the fishing gear, it killed out, unusually enthusiastic to follow the crew to work on the boat.
No one expected that it would not be long before it gave birth to a litter of kittens on the ship, good guys, the whole five kittens!
The crew looked at each other, and realized that it was not because it ate too well fat, but pregnant, waiting to find acquaintances porcelain. But that could not be helped, the crew gave it more fish and let it live a comfortable post-natal life.
So the litter of kittens grew up on the ship. After several trips to sea, the litter became a regular resident of the ship, running around on the deck all day, one of them fell into the well (seems to be the ship’s fresh water storage equipment), scared and screaming, the crew came to the sound, the kitten rescued, the little fallen cat is safe and sound.
This may be hereditary, because its mother also fell into the sea, after swimming around in the sea, it even pulled the thick rope on the side of the ship, and climbed back to the deck, quite tenacious.
Later this litter of kittens gradually grew up, the crew of other ships heard about it, overjoyed, have come to ask for cats and rats. So a litter of kittens scattered to various fishing boats, became the ship’s cat of other ships.
There was also a boat cat, because of the lack of heart and famous dock.
What is it about? This cat’s eyes are not very good, often mistaken, several times with the wrong boat, run to someone else’s boat to go to sea. My aunt’s boat was about to leave, and when he didn’t see the cat, the returning crew told him: Your cat ran on the wrong boat and came to our boat. My aunt then knew where it had gone. Later it also ran a few times the wrong ship, resulting in the status of the ship cat is not maintained, by other ships cat competition on board, it had to go to other ships to live.
In the ship, the relationship between people and cats is not a relationship between people and pets, but a state of mutual benefit based on the real needs. It reminds me of how people and cats used to cooperate in the olden days.
Unlike the fully domesticated dog, the cat was a semi-domesticated animal, and people did not directly use the cat, but used it to catch rats in the granary. The cat gets the mice as food, and the people get the granary that is not spoiled by the mice, and everyone gets what they need. The wild cat may leave the granary at any time and go to another house to make a living, and the human may drive away the wild cat that does not catch mice properly and bring back a new cat. In this way, cats began to work for humans.
On the ship, the cat not only catches rats, but also eats fish. The crew will not deliberately starve it, because the cat will still catch rats when it is full. This is the nature of the feline, their hunting behavior is not entirely to fill their stomachs, but also sometimes for fun and to hone their skills.
The crew pays the cats for the mice on board, and for the fresh fish. They don’t count how much the fat fish the cats take can sell for in the grocery stores and supermarkets, because on the boat, fish is just fish, a natural resource of the sea, and it hasn’t been priced. Its price will only be counted by humans after it gets off the boat and is taken wholesale by fishmongers into the circulation market. Until then, the fish is just food, a reward paid to the boat cats, and nothing more.
After listening to the story of the boat cats, I thought freely of the future. Maybe many years later, when the descendants of the boat cats grow up among the docks and fishing boats, they will get used to going to sea and establish a new kind of “employment” relationship with humans, waiting for the offer to work on the boat in turn, and their past performance and reputation among the crew will be their resume.
But perhaps, with the depletion of fishing resources, eventually farmed fish replaced fishing, and fishing boats stopped going to sea, and the boat cats on the docks scattered to the cities and the countryside, some becoming human pets, some living the same life as their ancestors millions of years ago.
But they will always live, after all, they are still an animal that has not been completely domesticated.
Recent Comments