The Krauts can have it for the next four days, he thought. I wonder if the fish hang close under them and play around them when they are submerged in weather like this. I wonder how far down the motion goes. There are fish in these waters at any depth that they submerge to. The fish are probably very interested. Some of the submarine bottoms must be pretty foul and the fish would certainly fool around them. They are probably not foul much though on the schedules they run. The fish would be around them anyway. He thought a moment of the sea and how it would really be offshore today with the hills of blue water with the white blowing from their crests and then he put it away from him.
The cat, asleep on the blanket, woke as the man reached over and stroked him. He yawned and stretched his front legs, then curled up again.
“I never had a girl that waked when I did,” the man said. “And now I haven’t even got a cat that does. Go on and sleep, Boy. It’s a damned lie, anyway. I had a girl that woke when I did and even woke before I did. You never knew her, you’ve never known a woman that was any damn good. You had bad luck, Boise. The hell with it.
“You know what? We ought to have a good woman, Boy. We could both be in love with her. If you could support her you could have her. I’ve never seen one that could live on fruit rats very long, though.”
The tea had dulled his hunger for a moment but now he was very hungry again. At sea he would have eaten a big breakfast an hour ago and probably had a mug of tea an hour before that. It had been too rough to cook on the run in and he had eaten a couple of corned beef sandwiches with thick slices of raw onion on them on the flying bridge. But he was very hungry now and he was irritated that there was nothing in the kitchen. I must buy some canned stuff and keep it here for coming in, he thought. But I’ll have to get a cupboard with a lock to be sure they do not use it up and I hate to lock up food in a house.
Finally he poured himself a Scotch whisky and water and sat in the chair and read the accumulated daily papers and felt the drink soothe the hunger and ease the nervousness of being home. You can drink today if you want, he told himself. Once you’ve checked in. If it’s this cold, there won’t be many people at the Floridita. It will be good to be there again, though. He did not know whether to eat there or up at the Pacifico. It will be cold at the Pacifico, too, he thought. But I’ll have a sweater and a coat and there is a table in the lee of the wall by the bar that will be out of the wind.
“I wish you liked to travel, Boy,” he told the cat. “We could have a fine day in town.”
Boise did not like to travel. He was terrified that it meant being taken to the vet’s. He was still frightened of the veterinary surgeons. Goats would have made a good car cat, he thought. Probably would have been a hell of a boat cat, too, except for the spraying. I ought to let them all out. I wish I could have brought them some sort of a present. I’ll get catnip in town if there is any and get Goats and Willy and Boy drunk tonight on it. There still should be some catnip in the shelf of drawers of the cat room if it hasn’t gotten too dry and lost its force. It lost its force very quickly in the tropics and the catnip that you raised in the garden had no force at all. I wish we noncats had something that was as harmless as catnip that would have as much effect, he thought. Why don’t we have something like that we can get drunk on?