A boy and his tiger on a boat

”I spy with my little eyes something that begins with the letter o,” said Thirsty.
“Is it the ocean again?”
“Not this time.”
O, what starts with o that isn’t ocean? Ontology, oviparous, octopus…
“Is it an octopus?”
“Yes. She’s giving you the bedroom eyes just off the stern.”
He opened his eyes. There was a pale-lilac head rising out of the water, tentacles circling about. The dangers of open water.
“Shoo,” he said, standing up. “I’m with someone.”
“My mistake,” said the many-tentacled one, diving down with a plop. She didn’t seem very offended.
“Icky crustaceans,” Thirsty said, now right behind him.
“I don’t think krakens are crustaceans,” he said.
“Icky anyway.”
Thirsty nuzzled against his cheek with her forehead. He’d understood this manner of behaviour to be something cats did when they marked something with their scent. In a human body, the bits she tried to use for that marking were her eyebrows. It felt silly and he wasn’t sure if it worked. He scratched her behind the ear though, absentmindedly, as one does with an affectionate cat.

When they’d boarded the boat, Thirsty had been wearing a shirt over her bikini, a white one so thin it was translucent. Once aboard, she’d removed the shirt to lounge in the sun, as cats do.
“Unhook my top,” she’d asked him. “I’ve enough stripes as is.” He hadn’t been sure if it was meant to be a joke or not. Her tan was now quite well displayed, and so too was the rest of her. He’d always admired the raw muscle of a tiger. Look up a picture of one on the internet if you can’t see one in a zoo, look at the shoulder, the bicep. That is strength. That is muscle tuned to its apex. And in a jinko it was all given human form.

They were headed to her ancestral homeland now. Up above seagulls circled, both the old kind and the new. The latter cried out the familiar call of “mine, mine”, while the old kind screeched their birdsong calls that amounted to very much the same thing. Theirs wasn’t a big boat. He’d name it Lila, after that Robert M. Pirsig novel. That had been about a boat trip as well. Just without the tiger. That had been another book.

Thirsty was pressing against his back. He could feel her heartbeat, but also a low sort of rumble. They called it a chuff. Big cats don’t purr, they chuff. It sounded so odd, coming from such a human body. She put her hand next to his, the striped fur and claws reminding him that maybe it wasn’t so odd a thing.
“I’m thirsty,” she said.
“I know.”
She giggled, a light bubbling laugh so utterly effeminate it should’ve been at odds with the tiger, and yet wasn’t.
“Didn’t mean that.”
“Sorry. I’ll go pour us some cranberry juice.”
“Didn’t mean that kind of thirsty either.”
“We’ll wander off-course if we go below for a while, you know.”
“So let’s wander.”
Well, there it is. Once they reached their destination, he’d get to meet her family and there’d be celebrations and ceremonies and all that went with presenting a groom to the family. Nice as that would be, he wasn’t in any hurry to get there. For now he was relatively alone with Thirsty, and that was plenty.
“Down the hatch, then,” he said, and with feline grace the tiger disappeared down below, the tip her tail wiggling as it slipped from his sight. No hurry whatsoever.