| April 17, 2003 We have a new member of the ship's family. Chai, a sealpoint Siamese kitten, three months old, has joined us. We found her after wandering through the Internet and visiting with Siamesereascue.org, which seemed a good place to locate a needy cat, we thought. We filled out the application and sent in the fee and waited for a call from the rescue people. They told us they wanted to interview three references from non-family members. Okay, we found three friends who know about our love for Siamese cats and I submitted to a long phone interview. The interviewer was a little perturbed about the notion of a cat living aboard a boat. "We like our rescued cats to be indoor cats," she said. I told her the cat would be mostly "indoors" and it would never be wandering off around the neighborhood because the neighborhood outside our front door is a little damp. The rescue people sent us an email saying we did not fit the qualificationsnecessary to care for one of their thousands of desparate Siamese cats. A little madness is afoot, methinks. |
| Meet Chai, the new ship's cat |
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| But we regrouped and found Chai with the help of daughter Stephanie. She is the runt of the littler but is quite spunky. We drove south today after a night of sleep in Burlington,VT. Lake Champlain mostly is free of ice but there still are enormous flows in Malletts Bay, near Stephanie and Alex' house. The good news is the ice IS melting after an extraordinary winter. We're now with daughter Lynn in Kent, Connecticut, where the temperature hovers around freezing at night. I moved our boat along Long Island Sound to Stratford where we had her hauled and have started preparing her for her new voyage to Maine this summer. |
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