My cat is pretty good at playing dumb, but it wasn’t clear that he knew anything. I had left my cat, Sloopy, at home because he hates staying at the vet’s or even at my mother’s house. I really believe he’s more attached to my house than he is to me. In any event, I hired my neighbor to come over twice a day and feed him and give him fresh water. And spent a half-hour every evening watching TV in my living room while Sloopy slept next to him on the couch.

Sloopy-Photograph by Bob Culver

Oh, I almost forgot he had to clean out the litter box every day and brush Sloopy because he is a long-haired cat that gets terrible mats. If he isn’t brushed out regularly, and believe me, that is a real nightmare. He hates being brushed and is prone to biting and nipping at the brusher. I have the scars to prove it.

Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I took a much-anticipated cruise to Alaska. I live in Los Angeles, and so I just hopped on a Princess Cruise ship right there at the port.

Things got off to a rough start, and I should have taken that as a sign. But not being all that superstitious, I thought I was having a string of bad luck, as per usual. Somehow, my reservation got screwed up. And I didn’t get the cabin I paid for. I got one so small that it was difficult closing the cabin door. Once both I and my suitcase were in the room. I ended up keeping my suitcase under the bed. And taking my clean clothes out one at a time and putting my dirty ones in a plastic bag inside the suitcase after I took them off.

One good thing was the food. I never took a cruise before, and I didn’t realize that the ship was just one big, floating restaurant. A floating restaurant with tiny bedrooms attached. I ate so much in the first few days that I could hardly zip any of my pants. It turned out the second half of the cruise. We had some rocky waters due to an unexpected change in the weather.

I felt a bit seasick during that leg of the trip and didn’t eat that much. Since I was alone on the cruise, and almost everyone else came with their mate, I found myself having my meals with an odd assortment of single people ranging in age from forty-something to eighty-something.

I admit I’m over sixty, but I still have plenty of life left in me. I can’t say I was looking for the love of my life. I had already had that, at least for a while, until the unfortunate divorce. I was hoping to meet the love of my life on my vacation. Didn’t happen, not even close. I did meet an interesting woman. She was eighty years old.

I met her the first evening when I went down to have dinner in the dining room called Last Call. She saw me wondering about looking for a place to sit down. I heard a booming voice calling out above the buzzing of all the other voices, “Hey, you, big guy, come here, come sit with us.”

I looked around,  trying to figure out who belonged to this foghorn of a voice. Then I saw a very small woman in lime green and shocking pink Mumu waving frantically at me from across the room.

Her name was Hermine, and she was quite a pistol and had me laughing my head off throughout most of the trip. Goes to show you shouldn’t judge a book by its wrinkled old cover.

I walked nonchalantly over there, and she said, “come on, come on, don’t be shy, have a seat. She looks at all the people around the table, all women, by the way.

“Look at what we have here, the only handsome single man on the ship. You remind me of a man I knew back in the late 1960s, got to know him quite well, as matter of fact, intimately, if you know what I mean.” At this point, she gives me a big wink and a salacious grin.  This was the moment I knew my luck had taken a turn for the better.

It turns out she had spent most of her life traveling with some kind of carnival. She had a lot of intriguing stories to tell of bearded ladies and a man tattooed who looked like a tiger, including having fangs put on his canine teeth. Not to mention, a set of Siamese twins joined at their backs, who never actually saw each other face to face but hated each other’s guts all the same.

But the strangest one of them all was the three-legged man, who had three functioning legs, except he couldn’t use the third one because it was several inches shorter than the other two. He had special ornate suits made to fit his unique physique. He had made a fortune exhibiting himself. He was from India and retired at thirty, a wealthy man in his home country. Where he is considered a celebrity, he fell in love with the then-shortest woman in the world, who was about thirty-six inches tall. I dare say they must have created quite a stir when they were walking along the streets of Calcutta.

After visiting Anchorage, a place in which I damn near lost my fingers, it was so cold. I also took a lot of digital pictures. I planned on boring my fellow members of my camera club at the next monthly meeting. I have taken over five hundred pictures, and I hope to show them all.  They had done the same thing to me many times over the years. Hermine kept me company as we hit a few of the typical tourist spots. The second day, she said, “OK, stretch, this isn’t my first trip around this rodeo. So I’m going to show you some of the, shall we say out of the, way sites, places only the people in the know, know about.”

For the next two days, I met some of the strangest people. I think they were people. And I saw some sights that I would never forget, no matter how hard I try. I’ll mention this one because I keep hoping if I tell enough people about it, I can release it from my memory.

We walked for about a half-hour to an alley that led to yet another alley and then to a back street called, You Ain’t In Kansas Anymore. I’m not shitting you here. I met a guy, well over seven-foot-tall, whose hobby was to “create” fantasy creatures from parts of different animals. One that is forever burned into my memory. It’s preserved under a glass globe and looks like it comes from another planet. It seems part beaver and part antelope, with lots and lots of sharp pointed teeth. I could write a book about the tour that Hermine took me on in those few short days, and maybe I will one day.

Let’s just say for now that it was a very memorable trip, and don’t ever make the mistake of judging a book or an old lady by her wrinkled old cover.

Eight days after I left LA, I arrived home and took a taxi to my apartment. It took about one hour because of the heavy rush hour traffic. I was looking forward to seeing Sloopy. Who heard me coming to the door as I wrestled with the sticky lock on my apartment door. I had bought him a little souvenir doll from Anchorage, and I hoped he would love it as much as I did. It was a stuffed cat wearing a tee shirt with; I survived the Ice Rivers in Alaska emblazoned across it.

I fumbled with the lock for a few minutes. I managed to pull the door open only to be assailed by the most putrefying smell as if something had died and was rotting. I prayed it was not my beloved Sloopy, and thank god it wasn’t.

Unfortunately, it was my neighbor and cat sitter, Mr. Bean. He was laid out on the kitchen floor, with his hand clutching at his chest. Sloopy was sitting near him, but not too near since he has a very sensitive nose.

Mr. Bean was dead, as dead can be. He had a weird expression on his face, unfortunately not a peaceful one. I felt his pulse in his neck and was met by a cold dead stare. Sloopy walked over to me calmly and rubbed against my trembling arm, and let out a loud “Meow.” I washed out his bowl and put some kibble out for him since his food dish was empty. He seemed relieved to see me, as I was him, but not under these distressing circumstances.

I reached over to my phone and dialed 911, and explained the unpleasant circumstances. They arrived shortly and questioned me in detail. The coroner arrived and concluded that Mr. Bean was indeed dead as if I had questioned that fact. He asked if anyone else was witness to his death, and I said, “Yes, of course, Sloopy, but it just doesn’t matter anymore because he is my cat and can’t tell you a thing.