Diary of a Deckhand

When I very first came to Orkney, I was pleased to find that Hazel had a cat on the farm – Tuffy the Rodent Slayer, a rather short round farm moggy who took one look at me and decided her cuddle quota had just increased beyond her wildest dreams. She loves to follow you around the farm, you can be miles from anywhere and a small furry thing will be padding along behind you happy as anything. One afternoon I noticed that Tuffs was getting a little rounder, a little chunky around the midriff. On asking if she had been neutered I was told no, to which I replied I suspected we might be getting several more cats at some time in the future.





One early morning at around 5am the golden sun was making its lazy way up from the East a strange squeaking noise dragged me from the warm comfort of sleep. Tuffs was in the bathroom on a shelf, two small wet noisy kittens blindly blundering around. As I watched, two more emerged and I left her to it. Tuffy the Rodent Slayer gave birth to Willow, Giles, Sam and Simon.

By 10am I had them into a box with a blanket and mum was purring really rather proudly, four fat babies snoozing in the warmth. They grew quickly from blind and helpless into furry hooligans running riot.









Slowly growing too big for the lodge where I lived, they were evicted to the feed store, complete with furry blanket, box and food. Less than 24 hours later a mad scrabble and some muffled mewing told me that they really were less than impressed with this arrangement and preferred it in with me. However, perseverance paid off and they became rather ineffective farm cats, being really rather good at catching mice and feathers, and bits of straw and all sorts of things that really are no challenge to a normal farm cat.



I would miss my spells away from them, usually asking Hazel how they were each morning when she arrived at the boat. Sam disappeared first, he has been gone for over two months now and I hope he has landed paws down the way and has been adopted by someone who can cope with a cat who really would like a cuddle 24 hours a day. I miss him, he was my favourite one of the litter.

Giles was a handsome cat, beautiful tabby stripes of glossy fur, green eyes and so intensely friendly he liked nothing better than to stuff his head into your armpit while you stroked his back. He had the magic sense to find you as soon as you headed out of the house, suddenly a cat would appear and get in the way until a cuddle was supplied.







Giles died yesterday after suffering a fit. We have no idea what caused this, but it was totally unexpected. I don’t know where he is now, but I hope there are lots of armpits to stuff his head into.