Ginger and the Captain Part 2 – from an Unpublished Work

Ginger had been sitting very still, looking through the kitchen door, hoping he could dash through the kitchen door when it was open and out through the dining room. But he could never tell when the door was going to open. Boom! It would open and someone would come through. Then it would just slam shut again.

He started to get worried and without realizing it he stood up. When he moved, the chef saw him out of the corner of his eye. He looked up and there was a cat in his kitchen! The chef screamed in Japanese and he threw a great big meat cleaver at Ginger. Ginger ducked and the meat cleaver smashed through the window and Ginger went right through after it!

He ran down the alley as fast as he could with the Japanese chef yelling at him. He ran all the way back to the dock where the sailors were waiting to go back out and he jumped in the boat and decided he would stay out of restaurant kitchens from now on.

Ginger, being a sailing cat, you’d think Ginger would be used to water. But cats don’t like water.

So the first time there was a really big storm at sea, Ginger at first was scared. First he tried to hide in the galley and the cook said, “Out, out, out. I don’t have animals in my galley.” Galley’s are kitchens on a boat. He shoed Ginger out.

Ginger tried finding a dried place but everywhere he went it dripped or it splashed or it splattered. Or he was underfoot and people almost stepped on him and sailors would yell at him to get out of the way. He was wet and tired and nervous. He just kept trying some place farther down in the ship that was out of the way. And he just kept moving farther and farther toward the stern, the back of the ship.

After a while he wandered into an area of the ship he’d never been in before. This was when he was still very little. He hadn’t seen the whole ship yet. He climbed up a ladder, which is what they call the stairs on a ship. On a ship the stairs are really really steep. So he climbed up a few steps and he slipped through a door that was opened just a little bit.

All of a sudden he was some place he’d never been before and it was warm and dry. And after being almost stepped on and bumped and soggied and splashed and splattered and dripped on, he was happy to be somewhere warm.

Yes, there’s more!