When I’m not quilting or cat-minding, I like to go out on the lake. Fortunately, there’s one close by—like in-my-backyard kind of close by. I used to take a book out with me. I’d paddle my canoe to a shady bank, toss out an anchor, and stretch out in the bottom of the canoe and read for hours. (Mostly that was to get away from a noisy house.) Now I read at home, but I still go out on the lake regularly. Most of the time I’m fishing, but sometimes I go swimming with friends.
Sammy, the Handsome Ginger that you’ve seen and read about before, is my faithful watchcat. Well, he’s my faithful watchcat as far as dry land goes. He declines to come out on the dock at all, and I can’t imagine the cat-fight we’d have on our hands (I mean paws) if I tried to get him in the boat! But he keeps an eye out for me.
The last time I went fishing, I’d forgotten that he’d remained on the bank. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t even noticed him until I was ready to launch—I’d had to bail out the boat first, after a small flurry of wonderful thunderstorms. Then I had to dry out the seats enough that I wouldn’t get soaked while I was busy not catching fish (as it turned out). So it was only as I was getting into the boat that I noticed him: he was quietly sitting on the brick walkway down to the dock, watching my every move (and telegraphing quite clearly that he was plenty close enough to the water, thank you very much). I hollered out that I’d be back soon, then off I went.
Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Although I always tend to catch a tree or two when I go fishing, they’re usually the underwater kind—I cast toward brush piles in hopes of catching The Big One, right? Well, not that day. The first (and only) tree I caught that day was on the bank, and somehow I caught it about fifteen feet up, above the water. So there was no retrieving that hook. After tugging and whipping my pole around for a few minutes (knowing all the while that it was hopeless), I reluctantly cut my line and left my little spinner up in a tree. I then paddled smack-dab in the middle of the lake to fish strictly for bass (which I’d rather catch anyway—it’s what I grew up fishing). I also replaced my spinner with a small Rebel lure. It turns out that it was too small—it wasn’t heavy enough to cast very far. So there I go, replacing it with yet another lure–one that I thought would better.
Was I ever wrong! On about the third cast with this new “better” lure, I got the mother of all backlashes. I nearly had to unwind the whole reel to get that sucker out of there. So I did. And I decided it was time to call it a day—you know, before I hooked myself or fell out of the boat—and I headed back home.
As I got nearer my home, I thought I spotted something on the small bench we have under a lake-side tree. So I took a photo (the one above this entry). If you zoom in quite a bit, you’ll see my Handsome Sam, waiting patiently for Mama to get home. (He’s also in the shade, you’ll notice. Smart cat.) I spoke to him, across the water, so he’d know for sure it was Mama. He watched me as I approached and started docking the boat.
After I’d gotten it tied off and set, I turned around to tell him how much I appreciated his waiting for me. And this is what I see:
Yup, Sammy the Watchcat had—in the quietly pompous manner that cats typically have—turned his back on me, as if to say, “Waiting for you? Worried about you? Well, I never!”
Silly boy.