Catastrophe 2: Return of the Cat

I am a very, very bad cat

After Admiral Mini's last nautical escapade both cats have been banned from the Shell Splash Ops Centre, unless I'm present to keep an eye on them. It's been two months without an incident. Mini is asleep on the table and I have to pop downstairs and get dinner on. Next to her is a box containing 20 Dutch warships, 6 fluyts and an English galley frigate, securely lidded. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? It'll be fine, won't it?

No. Not fine. I come back an hour later to find the box on the floor. Upside down. No sign of cat.

I assume she must have been chasing a fly. With the onset of Spring it's officially fly hunting season, and if she hears the tantalising buzz of a delicious Crunchy Sky Snack, nothing stands in her way. Or maybe she just did it deliberately, because she thought it would be funny.

I stare at the box dumbfounded for a while. As long as I don't look inside then perhaps, like Schrödinger's cat, the ships exist in a superposition, simultaneously both undamaged and utterly mangled. Schrödinger's ships. For a moment I consider tracking the cat down and wagging my finger at her, but I know the response will just be the look that says: "Yeah whatever, puny human slave. Feed me."

Eventually I summon up the courage and gingerly open the box. At first glance it looks bad, a tangled mass of masts, like a bunch of Stickle Bricks having a drunken orgy. But thankfully it's not as grim as it first appears. A few bent bowsprits again (seems to be a weak point), and several ships have their mizzen masts bent forward slightly from the impact. Everything bends back in place ok, and the only damage requiring a visit to the dockyard is a fourth rate that's lost its mizzen topsail. Amazingly, there are no detached flags.

So all's well that ends well. It's a testament to the durability of the Tumbling Dice models that they fell 30" in a loosely packed box, spun around in mid air, and still survived. But don't try this at home.

Catastrophe

Admiral Mini checking her firing arcs.

Last night I decided to return to my Dutch Wars project. I have 19 English and 20 Dutch rated ships on the go. All were assembled and flagged and the English were painted at least half way to completion. They were kept in a lidded box. I opened the box to inspect them and was about to get them out and start work. I popped out to the shops for 10 minutes.

I returned to a disaster scene. One of our cats, almost certainly the one pictured above (though of course she denies it), had decided to have a battle.

Three ships of the English Red squadron took serious damage to their bowsprits:

Hopefully all fixable with some superglue and/or Viagra.

Damage to the Dutch was more widespread but also more superficial. Only one case of droopy sprit, the rest merely flags and spritsails:

Here's the rest of the English fleet returning home:

The moral of this story: if you have a cat who likes to get in boxes, and let's face it - they all do, don't leave boxes of fragile things lying around.