Thirty years ago or so, my wife had this cat. Biggles, she was called. The issue of an inbred pedigree Manx cat and a tomcat from a neighbouring farm, she had problems from the start and knew the local vets too well. But, as a human, she might have been described as good tempered and courageous. She liked riding on the Ferguson tractor, our yard scraper. And she took to traveling in cars. So, as we were doing quite a lot of boating at the time, we thought that she might like to try that. She seemed to take to it very well. With the boat on the move, she stayed inside. When stopped, she got off. A country cat, she explored, to the detriment of local small rodents. Her fault was time-keeping. She was unreliable when keeping to any planned movement programme. One evening we stopped just below Bunbury locks on the Shropshire Union. Just beyond the railway bridge, where there was plenty of vegetation. Plenty of hunting. In the morning she was missing. We stayed all day and searched. We contacted the local cat sanctuary and the lady told us that boaters did not take proper care of their cats. But that she would contact us if the cat was reported found. We stayed another two days. Searched both sides of the canal. Then we had to set off towards Chester but we turned round and came back. We called the cat's name. From the other side of the canal we heard a sound and we saw a little black blob appearing and disappearing in the undergrowth. It was the cat. She was jumping up and down, to see over the vegetation. The boat could not approach the opposite bank because it was too shallow. So we opened up the foredeck hatch and got out our fibreglass pram dinghy. I rowed it across and stuck the bows into the bank. The cat stepped aboard and I rowed her back to the towpath side and to my wife. The cat jumped off the dinghy onto the towpath. She seemed quite pleased to see us. She had never been in the dinghy before. I doubt she had ever seen it. How she came to be on the other side of the canal, which is quite wide there, we never knew. Perhaps she crossed by the railway bridge, but that seems improbable. Perhaps she fell off the gangplank. Perhaps she decided to go for a swim, but if so, she never did so again. The incident did not seem to affect her at all, although it did us. She continued boating with us until the end, always unreliable at proposed departure times but perhaps a bit more cautious. That apart, she was a fine boat cat. Is this History and Heritage? It is for us.
