The Pillow Has Fallen

It happened at 07:00 this morning and I want it on the record.

I woke up on the outer third of my own pillow. Container was on the inner two thirds, on her side, fully extended, front paws out, sound asleep, her face approximately two inches from mine. She had, at some point in the night, executed the final phase of a campaign she began somewhere off the Channel two weeks ago.

I did not move her. I lay there for a while doing the arithmetic. Foot of the bed on the fourth of August. Knees by the fifth. Hip, ribs, chest, collarbone. Pillow adjacent on the fifteenth. Pillow occupied on the nineteenth. It is one of the most disciplined operations I have ever witnessed and it was carried out by an animal that cannot open a door and yet somehow gets into a locked cabin every single night.

I have surrendered. Marco has found me a second pillow. It is thinner and it is now mine, and the good one belongs to the cat, and that is simply the arrangement on this ship.

I mentioned it to Priya on the bridge this morning. She listened to the whole account, including the dates.

"You kept a log," she said.

"I kept notes."

"You kept a log of a cat."

She looked back at the plot and, after a moment, said: "she has better tactics than you do, and she started with nothing. Learn from it."

Six weeks at sea today. Halfway down the Red Sea, Sudan somewhere to starboard behind the haze, Bab el Mandeb in a couple of days and then the Indian Ocean, which is large in a way I do not think I have properly prepared for.

I have tea. I have relocated biscuits. I have a thin pillow and a cat with a plan.

More soon.