Pitufa.at

During his third month aboard, Smurfy turned from a savage, but sweet kitten into a rebellious teenager with severe anger issues ignoring all boundaries and testing his limits daily. We tried all the usual tricks we had learned with our previous cats and also did some reading in cat psychology studies: never play with hands but toys, offer punching balls to get rid of aggression,… Continue reading »

I was quite unhappy when I spotted some spider veins on my boobs last year (of all possible places…). I had them lasered, but they quickly reappeared, so that wasn’t a solution. Planning our journey to Europe last August, I had the idea of a cover-up tattoo, got in touch with an artist in Turkey and liked her sketches. On the way back we did… Continue reading »

Falling over board and drowning is the biggest danger for a ship’s cat. Smurfy’s a reckless climber and we could not persuade him to be careful–he insisted on climbing on solar panels, balancing on the railing and other crazy stunts. We were eagerly waiting for him to finally fall in, so he would learn his lesson in a safe anchorage instead of on passage (where… Continue reading »

We love to linger in remote places, but of course you can’t just go shopping for fresh herbs, salad or veg on an uninhabited island… Therefore it’s great to grow some and we usually have basil, mint, spring onions, parsley and sometimes even bellpeppers, chilis, pak choy or tomatoes growing in pots underneath the sprayhood. They are placed on a non-skid mat and secured with… Continue reading »

Smurfy is growing up so fast! At barely 4 months he already weighs 2 kilos…

Keeping a kitten aboard busy keeps us pretty busy! Smurfy’s happy to play along with anything we play with (or rather everything we handle…), and he can play “chase” the mouse for hours just running after a rope or a roll of toilet paper, but we also want him to practice his dexterity. The first box we makeshifted lasted only a week–Smurfy just smashed it… Continue reading »

Smurfy has turned from a docile kitten to a raucous teenager within a few weeks. At least he’s still eager to help with every task Christian and I try to accomplish… How did we get anything done before we got our Smurfy?

Our loudspeakers in the cockpit started crackling and failing a few months ago. No problem, we got new ones in Austria and simply brought them back to the boat along with other roughly 59 kg of goodies for Pitufa… A few days ago while we were on passage, Christian ripped out the old ones and started cleaning and sanding the area while Pitufa was happily… Continue reading »

Our little Smurf has been with us now for a month, went from a handful of cat to more than quite a handful, from clumsy, sleepy baby to gangly, raucous kid, from 1 pound to almost 3 pounds! By now he’s an expert sailor, we have to keep him back as he’s getting a bit too adventurous for our taste One handful at 8 weeks… Continue reading »

When we inspected our Pitufa before the purchase, I thought the ugly ceiling lights would be the first things we’d toss. Somehow there were always more important jobs on the to-do list though. Now, only 16 years later, we’ve finally got round to replacing them

Pitufa’s steep ladder with 6 wide-apart rungs down our 160 cm high companionway is an insurmountable obstacle for a kitten. Impossible to climb up and potentially lethal when trying to jump down (despite a mount of cushions on the wooden floorboards). We therefore went out to buy material for a cat tree–not so easy in Port Vila. At first we couldn’t find a tube with… Continue reading »

That’s true for every kitten, but especially aboard, where understanding a few words in human language and actually obeying them can potentially save a few of a cat’s nine lives… We use the standard German word “NEIN” to tell him that something’s completely forbidden and taboo, which is handy as it’s not a word we use in any other context (when talking to each other… Continue reading »