When I first arrived on the waterfront full time, with no home to go back to in 1984. I was thrown into another world, a world I once lived in, so long before, that I had virtually forgotten, how what life was on the waterfront full time. All the protection and all the home to go to at night was gone. I lived on my leaky boat cold boat called Day Star a thirty foot marine plywood sailboat and I finally managed to create some heat by propane burners for cooking also and eventually worked my way up to a marine fireplace on my boat. It was a long haul my life being reduced to thirty feet of boat. Alone on an anchor without even a pet. I began to identify with any creature that was alive on my boat and I started bonding with the flies and spiders my only company inside my boat. I have a deal with the spiders that if they left me alone, that I wouldn't crush them, for I had heard for example that if you crush a wasp or a bee, a signal will be sent out by thier crushed bodies into the air and then all the other bees, will attack you. So I figured the same for spiders and I have never been bite on my boat, since 1984. Flies die themselves in three days, unless they come in waves. Besides the spiders help keep the flies down, to a minimum. I do believe that I might have seen Brown recluse spiders with the violin on thier backs saying you'll be sorry to mess with me, they will be playing volines over you, so to speak. Finnaly I got a cat and that is when I had my first pet on my boat, I was starving for companionship and I was quote a story, what I went through and the changes. First all it was a kitten and and sleep curled up on my head for warmth, because a cats body temperature, is slightly higher then ours, the same with dogs, so they get colder easier and curled on my head, kept us both warm. The hardest part was leaving the kitten on board and looking through a pothole and crying to come with me and not to be left alone. Little did I know, how bad it was to have a single cat on board, without a companion. It still breaks my heart, to thing of all the times, she was alone and frightened. Finally one stormy day or might, she fell off my boat was so lonely, for I had a emergency a family emergency in Los Angeles and had to leave in a hurry and left enough food and water out, until I returned and a dark storm came and frightened my cat and was found b, Ted Stewart and friends on the draybocks in the middle of the bay, drowned. Of course it was heartbreaking as well as the family emergency. So I tried again after someone gave me a female cat off a large boat anchored offshore on the bay. Th he cat had gone ferrou, living o such a large wooden boat, that looked like a decommissioned fishing trawler moored where the Vendura sailing yacht is moored now. The boat was so big that the cat got lost somewhere in it and someone from the boat gave me the cat and it turned out to be totally wild, I was told later by same person that gave me that cat, that it ate its young. Apparently they gave me the wildest or didn't want more kittens to be eaten. I finally had to get a gunnie sack and look for my wild and ferrou cat on my boat now, hiding and never seeing her, holed up way in the bow of my boat and only came out at nite, for food and water. Finally I miraculously caught the cat as it came out to eat and I grabbed her and had to wrestle with her to get her into the sack fighting and clawing all the way and I took her to shore and released her into the wild because she was already ferro, from living on a hugh and semi abandoned, or lived aboard boat. That was it no more cats on my boat for pets, yes j had to of them, to keep each other company, for short times. So I started thinking and dreaming and praying of getting a dog, that I could take with me to shore and I never had one of my own. So one day in front of Mollie Stones Market Iin Sausalito, I saw and Irish looking homeless women begging or panhandling in front of the Market and her face had a huge scab on her cheek that first glance looked ljke the worse case of Herpes that I have ever seen and both her lips also. She told me a story how her husband abandoned her in Hawaii where she lived on the isIand of Kaui and how shewas abandoned and he was a constructionworker, who began sellng drugs and gave Aids and Syphllous and other diseases and I gave her my hat to protect her from skin cancer and bought her a liter of Coke and I couldn't help but notice that her Irish red hair was one big dreadnought the likes I have never virtually seen looked like she had been homeless for decades or at lest ten years, so I went on my way and still thinking about adopting a dog and then i saw her walking down the street holding her head like she was the most miserable person onearth and then I had to do something! I told her I had a spare sailboat and would she like to stay on it anchored out and sidetided next to my main boat and only smaller then my thirty foot sailboat. I the winter I had to move her on my main boat because of the crashing waves and reanchor my smaller boat at a safe distance, otherwise our boats would be crashing together.
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