What’s with pets on board?

Iwas clicking through the various sailing pages on Facebook one evening, just before resorting to my favorite bedtime book—the Defender catalog, if you must know—when a post that was unusual even by Facebook standards caught my eye. A young fellow about to embark on the liveaboard life wanted to know how others dealt with the complex issues of keeping a parrot on board.

This immediately caused a painful flashback. As a youth I was bitten by a large parrot whose friendly demeanor concealed a murderous disposition, causing it to sink its beak into my thumb rather than the proffered carrot (no crackers were on hand). I’ve never trusted these feathered fiends since.

I knew two tame cockatoos when I lived in Australia—one gave an uncanny imitation of a bottle being opened and beer glugging into a glass, the other (unrelated) a blushworthy rendition of the infamous Meg Ryan restaurant scene from When Harry Met Sally— but amusing as they were, I never would have considered one as a shipmate. Those feathers, the screeching and squawking, the droppings… nope.

Such musings led me to recollect the various seaborne pets I’ve encountered over the years. I met few in Europe, whether canine or feline. The British tended not to bring Fido on the family cruise, and sensibly so, bearing in mind the summers there; it’s punishing enough being trapped on board with a boatload of bored children over a windy, rainy weekend without throwing a large, damp dog into the equation. The smell, the shedding fur, the need to take them ashore when you’d much rather be looking out at the pouring rain with a dram in your hand… not for me.

But what about a cat? From time immemorial, ships have had cats on board to catch vermin and provide companionship. I like cats. On a wet weekend there’d be something soothing about a moggy snoozing in the saloon, and you wouldn’t need to take it ashore twice a day, just make sure to empty the litterbox to leeward. Perhaps I could handle having a cat aboard. But then I recalled a scene from the film The Dove, where Robin Lee Graham’s kittens, playing in the folds of the mainsail, are hurled into the sea in a gybe. Ummm… no. Being responsible for two-legged crew is one thing, the utter unpredictability of four-legged crewmates is quite another.

Lest I come across as a pet-hating curmudgeon, I’ve lived with dogs and cats ashore for most of my life and like them just fine—ashore. I view pets afloat with a kind of bemused indifference, understanding why people like to take their furry friends sailing without ever wanting to do so myself. I picture a miserable dog trapped to leeward during a brisk 20-mile beat, or an adventurous cat misjudging a leap across the cockpit and ending up as shark food, and that’s it for me.

Perhaps I’ve been too dismissive of birds. A parrot swinging cheerfully on its perch while keeping my spirits up with some witty banter might be just the thing to liven up a dull passage. On the other hand, the language it learned in the course of a messed-up docking maneuver would probably disqualify it from ever being brought within earshot of non-sailors. s