Katten aan boord

In de Practical Boat Owner van september stond een artikel over het meenemen van een kat aan boord. De auteur komt tot de conclusie dat het achteraf geen succes was geweest. Ook moet je nogal wat moeite doen om je huisdier het Verenigd Koninkrijk in- en uit te voeren. Het mag sowieso niet met je eigen boot. Omdat wij positieve ervaring hebben met onze scheepskat kon ik het niet laten te reageren. Misschien hebben Dehlerslubleden er ook wat aan:

I’d like to reflex on the article “while the cat’s away’ in PBO’s september edition. Mr. Hare’s conclusion is that he had not done the cat a favour by taking her along. True, we didn’t take our cat along this summer, because we visited England’s East Coast (great sailing!) and we didn’t want to go trough all the (in my view overdone) procedures, when visiting the UK with a pet. Our Main Coone Asley has a chip, passport and gets all the nessesary vaccinations, so I don’t see why we couldn’t take her to the UK on our own sailingyacht. Being like it is, this time she had to stay with our son. Anyway, on other occasions we frequently take Asley on board and we think both the cat and us are quite happy with that. On board the cat is wearing a harness to have something firm to grab on to, but there is no leach attached. After having to untangle her every five minutes we gave up. We also tried a pet life vest, but she made a show by pretending to be crippled and managed to get out of it again and again, making Houdini look an amateur. Having no other safety measures available we have trained her to go no further than the cockpit area at all times and in general she has accepted this. In case she falls overboard dispite of this, we have a landingnet on a long pole ready for use on the pushpit to be able to pick her up. As we take her sailing on a regular basis she settles on board with ease. Every now and then she gets in an investigating mood, so you have to keep an eye on her. She get’s seasick from time to time, but recovers in a few hours. We tried to mix her favorite food with anti histamines, but she refused to take it. Although she is on four, she’ll never get sea legs, so short jumbs in the cockpit area should be well monitored because of the danger of her going over the side. On a sailing trip she makes herself comfortable under the spayhood on the coiled haulyards or when its getting to wet because of spray or rain she goes down below. In short, cat’s can be ‘marinised’, altough it depends on the cats personality.

[img]http://www.dehlerclub.nl/images/kat_aan_boord.jpg[/img]

Bewerkt door: hofstra, 03 sep 2010 – 09:50