Ginger, the Ship Captain’s Cat

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One December a long time ago I was very sick, all month long. A cold with a blinding headache made it difficult to keep my eyes open. This meant I couldn’t read our Little One a bedtime story.

This was no minor inconvenience. It was, in fact, The End of the World and she let me know it.

When I realized resistance was few tile (you know you have to pronounce it like that) I made up a story about an orange cat who lived on a sailing ship long ago. Being orange, we had to name him Ginger. He had an adventure in a Japanese restaurant. For the life of me I can’t imagine where that came from, but like I said, I was pretty sick.

Little One went to bed happy. Which meant we all got to go to bed happy.

The next night, she came into our bedroom and said, “Then what happened?”

“What happened where? To who?” Hey, I was sick, remember?

“What did Ginger do after he got back to the ship?”

“Oh. The cat. Um, I don’t know. They sailed away. The End.”

Yeah, it ended right there. In my hallucination.

What really happened was that every night for the whole month, she got another Ginger story, all 31 days of December. By the 4th night we realized we were in for the long haul, and Best Beloved started recording them. I retold the ones we’d missed, so we have them all recorded.

And transcribed.

And now, all these years later, illustrated by the illustrious Davina Kinney.

“Ginger, the Ship Captain’s Cat is a delightful, fun read. Right off, the author explains that these stories were told to a little girl in his life, and when I read the stories to my granddaughter it was as if I could feel the author’s joy in reading to a youngster he cherishes. For me, that’s what makes this book of short stories a treasure to cherish. Sharing these magical stories are like passing a heartwarming torch from one family to the next. What’s not to like? The stories are written from Ginger the cat’s point of view. Adorable!”—Sue Colletta