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Odelia wanted to stay with us, but we urged her not to change her itinerary on our account. After all, we were safe now, and no harm was done to speak of, so there was absolutely no reason for her to interrupt her honeymoon for this minor incident.

And so she and Chase finally set out to go ashore and enjoy the sights and sounds of St. George’s, which is a town in Grenada, where apparently we’d dropped anchor.

Before she left, though, she placed her tablet computer on the sofa. She’d set it up so it connected with the ship’s Wi-Fi, and urged us to talk to our friends back home and tell them all of our news.

My teeth had finally stopped chattering, and my coat was dry once more, the salty water having been washed out by a patient Odelia in the bathroom. She’d applied the same treatment to Dooley, removing every last trace of brine, and to speed up the process had even aimed a blow-dryer at our precious bodies. Under normal circumstances I would never have stood for this, for I hate blow-dryers with a vengeance. But since the upshot was that we’d soon be warm and dry again, I reluctantly gave her a license to blow-dry just this once. It was actually nicer than I’d imagined and it was a contented Max and Dooley that now faced the camera to engage in a little post-disaster chat with Harriet and Brutus, located on the other end of the connection.

“You did what?!” asked Harriet when we told her what we’d just gone through. “You jumped in to save Dooley? Did you fall off the ship, Dooley? Did you lose your balance?”

“No, I was grabbed by a bird,” said Dooley.

“Grabbed by a bird?” asked Brutus. “But why? What did he want?”

“I guess he wanted to eat me?”

“I didn’t even know that birds ate cats. I always thought it was the other way around.”

“I didn’t know either,” I confessed.

“Some of the big birds do indeed prey on cats and other small mammals,” said Harriet. “They will grab mice and rats and rabbits… and even cats.”

“They tried to grab Max, too, but couldn’t lift him,” Dooley said.

“Dooley,” I said warningly. It hadn’t exactly been my finest hour.

“What? It’s a good thing they couldn’t lift you, Max. Very strategic of you.”

Strategy hadn’t featured into the thing, but I wasn’t prepared to elucidate.

“This would never have happened if you’d just stayed home, instead of going on this silly cruise,” said Harriet, who still hadn’t gotten over her initial annoyance that Odelia and Chase had picked us to go along with them and had left them at home.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Turns out cruises can be very dangerous for cats.”

“Not just for cats,” said Brutus. “Plenty of people end up falling overboard every year. Dozens and dozens, in fact.”

“But why?” asked Dooley.

“Oh, because they’re drunk, or not careful enough, and then there are the people who jump overboard on purpose.”

“And why would they do that?” asked Dooley, interested.

“Probably because they want to go for a swim,” said Harriet. “You know what humans are like. They like to court danger.”

“So what happened?” asked Brutus. “How did you get saved?”

“Well, Odelia told one of the crew members, who raised the alarm, and so the captain immediately stopped the boat, and dispatched a rescue boat,” I said.

“Only they thought they were saving two humans, and not two cats,” said Dooley with a laugh.

“Yeah, you should have seen the look on their faces when they discovered we were the ones they were coming to save.”

“And why not?” said Harriet. “Cats have just as much right to be saved as humans.”

“They were very nice about it in the end,” I said. “They wrapped us both in towels and rubbed us dry. All in all it was a very interesting experience.”

“For one thing I discovered that I can swim,” said Dooley. “Imagine that. I always thought I couldn’t, but turns out I can.”

“How did you manage that, Dooley?” asked Brutus, who’d once fallen into a duck pond and had to be saved by Chase.

“I don’t know. I guess I just… floated. And then I moved my paws around a bit and that made me move in the direction I wanted to go.”

“Same here,” I said. “I think cats naturally float. So we shouldn’t have been so worried about not being able to swim. Turns out that we can.”

“Huh,” said Brutus, “Who knew?”

“Not me,” said Harriet. “I can’t swim. My coat is too nice and big and it soaks up water like a sponge. I’ll bet that when I end up in the water I’ll simply sink straight to the bottom like a stone.”

“No way,” said Brutus. “You can swim just as well as the rest of us, sugar plum.”

“No, I’m sure I can’t,” said Harriet stubbornly.

“Maybe you can give it a try,” I suggested. “In the park pond.”

“In the duck pond? No way, Max!” said Harriet. “You really want me to swim in all that horrible duck muck? My coat will be so dirty Marge won’t even let me into the house. I’ll never get it clean again—never!”

“I told Max we can use our adventure to become influencers,” said Dooley “and travel the world as a family from now on. You know, all of us living on a cruise ship?”