Jane King is a full-time faculty member at the University of Phoenix, where she teaches online.  She is also a retired business lawyer.  After many years, she has returned to writing fiction.  She is also an avid animal lover—with cats being at the top of the list. This is the fourth story in her series, The Ten Lives of Hector, The Cat! 

The Fourth Life of Hector, The Cat!

Hector, The Cat! Time Travels Into the Sargasso Sea!

As a species that dominates the world, creating bad and good along the way, sometimes humans forget that our very best friends–who belong to a different species– can help us solve the problems that we have created.  This is certainly true for Hector, The Cat!  In this fourth life adventure, Hector, together with living beings from the sea and from the Universe, helps to solve one of the most urgent challenges for our planet.

As those of you know who have read Hector’s first, second, and third life stories, Hector is a time traveling cat who–entirely when he feels like it–finds his way to the study in the home he shares with his human mother, Sheila, jumps up onto the desk, and climbs onto a very large open dictionary on the desk.  After he falls asleep on the dictionary, he miraculously travels to a place with an entry on one of the open pages in the dictionary.  Some of these journeys prove to be very dangerous and he loses one of his nine lives.  So far, Hector has lost four of his nine lives.  The fourth life was lost during this adventure into the Sargasso Sea.

As Hector was telling me about this fourth adventure, he told me that he had developed quite a yearning to visit the sea.  He did not know very much about it, though, and so, borrowed a book about cats and the sea from his cousin, Professor Topsy Turvey.   When he received the book—which was almost immediately through time and space—he quickly hid it in a secret place where he could read it without his human mother seeing it. 

Over the next few weeks, Hector spent some time escaping to his hiding place under the stairs and reading his book.  In the book, he found a chapter that covered myths about the sea, and it was here that Hector’s plan started to take shape.  Apparently, there was some evidence to believe that a city existed at the bottom of the Sargasso Sea, and that a tribe of seacats called the Aquacatties could be asked for help to visit this city.  The city was called Catlantis, and was an ancient city inhabited by a variety of life forms, although the catauthor of the book included a disclaimer as to the types of creatures who lived or visited there. 

After finishing the book, Hector’s plan began to take shape.  Hector believed, based on his research, that if he could get to the Sargasso Sea in a boat, he would be in the best position to try to contact the Aquacatties.  They tended to stay in the Sargasso Sea area because it was so idyllic and relatively safe from humans.  And, of course, Catlantis was likely to be at the bottom of the Sargasso Sea. 

As Hector thought about his need for a boat, it was then that he remembered his cattiefriend Captain Vanilla Butty.  His thought was that she could meet him in a boat on the Sargasso Sea, and help him to find and swim with the Aquacatties.   As you will recall, Captain Butty had often time traveled to the 16^th Century and had been a pirate on the high seas.  When he contacted her through space, and asked for her help, she was overjoyed to do it. 

“Oh, I have sailed on the Sargasso Sea!” she said.  “Of course, I will help you, Hector.  We will need to be extremely careful, though, to avoid any part of the Bermuda Triangle. I will ask my friend, Rose, the Ferocious Chihuahua, to join us as well.” 

“That sounds perfect,” said Hector.  I would love to see her again.  Thank you again, Captain, for your help.”

Some months later, Hector heard from Captain Butty who told him everything was ready to receive him.  The large sailboat was located at specific longitudinal and latitudinal points on the Sargasso Sea.  Both she and Rose, the Ferocious Chihuahua, would be watching for him to arrive on June 29, 2049.    This was the date they had time traveled to.

In the early afternoon of June 29 in his own year of 2023, then, after he had finished lunch with Sheila, Hector found his way to the desk in the study.  In this instance, though, and for the first time, Hector had decided beforehand on his destination.  It was very important for him before he climbed onto the dictionary to focus his mind on only the precise details of his destination as explained to him by Captain Butty.  As he settled himself down to sleep on the dictionary, he continuously repeated the directions “sail boat Sargasso Sea June 29, 2049, latitude 32.321384 and longitude -64.75737 Captain Butty pad in the bow…….”

******

“Hector! Hector! Hector, The Cat! Hector!  Hector! Hector, the Cat! You have arrived!  You are here!  Open your eyes!”  Captain Butty repeated this greeting over and over again as they watched Hector lying on the pad in the bow of their ship.  Rose, the Ferocious Chihuahua, barked and barked with that loud, sharp, snapping sound that is characteristic of Chihuahuas.  Gradually, after several minutes had passed they could see that Hector was waking up.  And, then, all of a sudden, he was with them. 

“Captain Butty! And, Rose! How wonderful to see you both!  It worked!  How exciting!  Thank you for making this possible.  I will always be grateful to you both.” 

After much talking and shaking of each other’s paws and wrapping their arms around each other, and Rose running around the boat excitedly barking all the way, the three friends discussed Hector’s next step in his journey.  Although Hector had read about the Sargasso Sea, he could not have imagined the thrill of seeing it as a separate sea within the ocean.  As you may know, currents form its borders and so, the movement around the Sea is dramatic and varied as compared with the stillness within its borders.   He saw the brown seaweed floating on its surface, and all manner of sea creatures and birds flying out of it and back down into it, and jumping about and swimming in it. 

Having taken some time to admire the view—feeling deep in his heart the beauty of this place–it was now time for Hector to try to contact the Aquacatties.  For this purpose, he sat cross-legged and focused his mind on this one object; and, within a short time, they appeared around his boat.  How can I describe them to you?!  They seemed as though they had been painted by Claude Monet, the French Impressionist painter.  They were full of ever-changing color: multiple shades of soft blues, pinks, purples, reds, and more.  They shimmered as the sun’s rays caught their color and reflected it as pure silk, but they were clearly in the form of cats swimming quickly and gracefully through the water. 

As Hector explained them to me, they were as fast and as graceful as dolphins, but they definitely had fur—sleeked back—and were multicolored as I told you.  They were more like sea lions, with whiskers and fur.  Their ears were flattened, their front legs were long flippers on their sides, and their back legs had been changed into a long tail.” 

“Hello!!!!!” they called out to Hector in echoing voices.  “Do you need our help?” 

“Yes, I do!”, cried out Hector.  I have come to visit the sea and would like to go to Catlantis.  Can you help me?” 

“Yes, of course, we can, they said in unison.  Just jump on one of our backs and we will take you there.” 

Hector did not think twice.  With the help of his two friends, he leaped from the boat and landed directly onto one of their backs.   “Hang on,” they shouted, “you are going to have the ride of your lifetime down and through the sea!”  

As they began to move quickly down, Hector looked back to wave at his friends, and could see them waving back at him.  He felt exhilarated, and a million other feelings that he could not name.  There were flashes of all forms of life in a multitude of colors and shapes. Down and down he went watching the familiar and not familiar sea creatures.  It felt like a flight through all of the tanks in an aquarium with the vast variety of life exhibited there, but here the creatures were free and there were so many more of them.  How wonderful to see them all flourishing without interference by human beings! 

After some time, Hector found himself in the deep sea  and it was dark except for a glow on the horizon ahead of him.  At some point, the Aquacatties communicated to Hector to look down.  When he did, he saw the most magnificent city he had ever seen.  As he looked at the city from the water above, he could see a glistening myriad of stunning structures—all sizes, shapes, colors.  Although he and his friends were swimming in the dark, everything below seemed to be bathed in the brightest sunlight. 

Soon, they all found themselves at one of the entrances to the city.  And, one of the Aquacatties then accompanied him through the entrance into the city.  Instantly, the sea had ended and Hector was transformed back to himself.  His friend took him to a coffee shop—this coffee shop, though, was expansive and all manner of beings were lounging and standing and sitting and crouching and hovering and walking around it.  As with all of the structures in the city, walls moved or did not exist.  The structures responded to the needs of the living creatures, and that included the plants and trees.  As they grew, the structures realigned themselves.  It was truly the most magical place Hector had ever seen.

At one of the wavering entrances to the coffee shop, the Aquacat said goodbye to Hector, and said they would collect him whenever Hector was ready to return to his boat.  All he needed to do was to send out his thoughts into the sea towards them.  Hector was very thankful, but at the same time was mesmerized by the ever-moving scene before him.  In other words, Hector, The Cat! was distracted!  Perhaps not the safest thing for a cattie to be!? 

As Hector moved around amongst the creatures, he noticed a large table with many different life forms sitting and talking.  They seemed to be very seriously discussing something, but had this intriguing system of communicating with one another.  When he approached the table, a purple and blue creature with no defined body form and large sparkling eyes encouraged him to join them.  As soon as he sat down, which was really not sitting but just being comfortably present, he understood that they were all talking about the human plastic waste problem in the Earth’s oceans and seas.  He gathered as they were talking that these beings represented all forms of life from throughout the universe, and there were Earth sea creatures as well which he had never seen before, but joined their voices with those of the visitors from other parts of the Universe.

The purple and blue creature who had invited Hector to join the discussion now created a private area for the two of them out of the space available, and asked Hector about himself. 

“I am Hector, The Cat! from England.  I time traveled to a sailboat in the Sargasso Sea.  From there, the Aquacatties brought me to Catlantis.  Do you mind me asking your name and where you are from?  Also, what Earth year is this?” 

“My name is Srooviy from the planet Matarrah in the Whirlpool Galaxy.  The Aquacatties sent me a message that they were bringing you here.  Welcome to our magical city, Hector, The Cat!” 

As Srooviy welcomed him, his eyes became even brighter, and the blue purple color of his form became even bolder.  “How beautiful!” Hector thought to himself.  Then, Srooviy continued, “The Earth year is 2049.”

“Oh,” Hector said, “this is the same year as above the sea.  This is over two decades in the future from my own time on Earth.  How long have you lived in this city?” 

“Oh, I do not live in this city, Hector.  I come here from time to time—the same as everyone else.  We are from all over the Universe and from the Earth’s seas.”

******

As Hector sat listening to the voices speaking at the same time all in different languages and sounds and in different modes of speaking, he suddenly just decided to interrupt in order to help.  Something Hector was good at was negotiating and organizing.  He was a nuts and bolts type of cat—a problem solver of the first order.  He believed that he could help all of these different beings solve this problem.  Also, he knew human beings probably better than any of the creatures present.  He all of a sudden, then, shouted as loud as he could:  “LET ME HELP SOLVE THIS PROBLEM!  BE QUIET EVERYONE!  I WILL HELP WITH THIS PROBLEM!”  By repeating these same words over and over again in a slightly louder voice each time, Hector was able to get every being’s attention.  He then proceeded to introduce himself and to offer to help them organize and take action.  As the beings and creatures listened to Hector and intuitively understood the full extent of his skills and abilities, they all cheered and agreed to let him help. 

For some time, Hector attended these meetings and took a lead role in organizing the efforts to solve the human plastic waste problem.  He was determined to bring everyone to agreement, and to create a plan that would work.  On one particular morning, intuitively knowing that Hector was ready to move forward, when he approached the area in the café, every creature stopped communicating so that Hector could speak.  And, he did!

“Well, friends, I believe the time has come to create our plan and to implement it.  Do you agree?” 

A great roaring sound containing all of the equivalents of “yes” filled the air immediately, and then, just as quickly, it was replaced by a silence in which a thousand eyes or their equivalent were focused on Hector. 

“I understand,” said Hector “from all of these days of listening to you and questioning you that between yourselves and your contacts in your homes out there in the Universe, that it might be possible to create a type of energy that could be wrapped around the Earth and applied specifically to the sea to collect all of the plastic waste from the oceans and to store it on the shorelines.  I have put two and two together here from everything I have heard.  But, I might have misunderstood.  Is it possible that you all could do this?” 

At this point, Hector could hear a great deal of musing—this was active thinking.  It sounded like a buzzing sound, and the air was becoming increasingly hot. 

After around 15 minutes, two or three of the beings, spoke up and said, “YES!” in their very loudest voices.  And, then, more of the creatures did the same, and then, even more of them, until there was a chorus of “YES!  YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!”  This wonderfully positive sound continued for some time, until Hector began to speak again, and complete quiet resumed. 

“I will need a large piece of paper and a black marker to complete our plan,” Hector said.  All of the creatures laughed hysterically at this old fashioned human way of doing things.  They then stopped, and suddenly, before Hector appeared a large sheet of paper and a black marker.  “I need a desk and quiet so that I can work undisturbed.”  This was immediately given to Hector.  As he worked diligently and quietly, his plans grew.  In the end, he produced for his colleagues a plan with dates, and notices to be used to inform humans of the options available to them.  Because all of the creatures had watched him work, they knew exactly what he proposed, and all agreed as soon as he was finished. 

On the appointed day, then, all of the powers of the Universe were brought to bear on the human plastic waste problem by those representatives who were helping Hector, The Cat! clean up the sea.  After this Herculean effort, wherever there was a shoreline– whether rocky or sandy beach–piles of plastic waste were found all enclosed in an invisible fence.  It was similar to those awful fences humans have invented for dogs.  If a human touched any part of this invisible fence, they received an electric shock.  Whatever they did, they just could not get to the waste so that they could dump it back into the sea.  This was the first choice from so many of the world’s leaders and heads of corporations.  Instructions appeared on each invisible fence—prepared by Hector. 

On the following day, after all of this activity, reports continued to pour in about the human reaction to the fenced-in plastic waste.  Human environmentalists and others who had been working hard for decades to solve the problem were encouraged now to help in practical terms.  Of course, first, governments would be influenced by commercial concerns to solve the problem by trying to eliminate the waste from the shorelines in some way, but, as we know, dear reader, given the tremendous power of the creatures from outer space and the sea, there would be very little they could do, other than to responsibly solve the problem.

As for Hector, now that his work was done, he was beginning to feel anxious to return home again.  He said goodbye to the new friends he had made, and they all thanked him for his contribution to solving the problem.  He contacted the Aquacatties, and before he knew it, one appeared outside of the coffee shop.  As he took his leave, he could hear all of the “thank you’s” and “goodbye’s” in just a cacophony of different sounds.  He looked back at all of them, placed his paw on his heart, turned, and left to enter the Sargasso Sea.

After jumping on the back of one of the Aquacatties, his new friends began to swim upwards towards the open sky and back to Hector’s friends on their boat.  He had communicated with Captain Butty before he left Catlantia, and was assured that they were there ready to collect him from his escorts.  For some time, the trip upwards on the currents throughout the sea was uneventful, and Hector just relaxed in the soft, warm water.  As he was doing this, he was looking at all of the sea life, and really was distracted away from his main important task.  Suddenly, he realized he had stopped holding on—he had let go!–and was falling away from the Aquacatties, and then, currents pulled him in a different direction.  It was at this point that he began to plummet down, and his descent was so fast that he had no time to think or to be fearful—he just kept falling, falling, falling for miles and miles and seemed to be in a massive dark downwards tunnel. 

At the end of this tunnel, Hector dropped through a hole, and a massive door closed above his head.  This quickly transformed into a blue sky so that when he looked up, he felt a comfort to see something so familiar to him.  He had a momentary concern that he had been lost in the Bermuda Triangle.  But, as he fell slowly to the ground, he found himself in an idyllic place.  Everything looked perfect and beautiful.  This was his imagined paradise, and Hector immediately felt at home and at peace.  He had no concerns or cares.  Everything was harmonious almost as though someone had waved a magic wand and made it so. 

Hector lived a tranquil life under the sea in this perfectly peaceful and calm place for he did not know how long.  Every moment was easy without any concern, and he felt thoroughly happy.  At some point, though, Hector began to miss Sheila and his home in England.  Although he had tried, he  was unable to contact Professor Topsy Turvey or Captain Butty or the Aquacatties.  He could not time travel out of this paradise which was beginning to feel like a prison.  As much as he tried to simply enjoy his surroundings and the wonderful peacefulness of it, his spirit was simply sinking. Every day, he felt lower in his emotions; in fact, as he told me, he felt completely blue and almost despondent.  He began to sleep more and to eat less, until a point where he was continuously sleeping, and it was then that Hector came close to losing his life.  There is no doubt that Hector, The Cat! was seriously in danger of completely disappearing from our Earth.  He was giving up…and slowly slowly slowly disappearing

******

Deep in his subconsciousness, Hector became aware of a serenading musical sound gently moving up and down and it seemed to be luring him back.  They were such  soothing sounds that Hector wanted to hear more of them.  As he tried to hear more, he slowly began to gain consciousness, and the closer he got, the more he was able to know and feel that the sounds were meowing songs, and he knew that there could only be one source for them:  The Aquacatties! 

At this point, something quite amazing happened.  Hector’s overwhelming desire to escape and to return home created a strong magnetic field that caused the blue sky cover to open and he was able to keep rising through it and onto the other side.  And, there they were: the Aquacatties!  They gently placed a soft net all around him, and carried him quite quickly to the surface.  To do this, they used their time traveling powers.  Soon, they splashed through the water, and Hector could see the real blue sky again of our dear planet Earth.  He also saw his friends, Captain Butty and Rose, the Ferocious Chihuahua, waiting to catch him as he was sent flying gently through the air to their arms. 

As Hector told me the story about his reunion with his friends, he seemed to have tears in his eyes.  They told him that he had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle, and he was certainly lucky to have survived.  When he was ready, he said goodbye to his two friends–who had decided to stay out on the sea for more time and to explore together– and time traveled to the dictionary in his home.  When he arrived and awoke, Hector quickly stretched on the dictionary and jumped down from the desk.  The house was quiet, so he gently called out, “Sheila, Sheila….”  There was no response, and so he tried again, “Sheila, Sheila….”  And, then, he heard her voice, “Hector, Hector, Hector, my dear, Hector, are you back?  Are you alive?  I have missed you so much, and my heart has been breaking feeling that I would never see you again.”  Weeks had passed since he had mysteriously disappeared from the dictionary and she had given up on finding him ever again.  But, there he stood in front of her, with his beautiful orange striped fur, and his pink nose and perfect whiskers, and kind green eyes.  She cried and cried until there was nothing left in her, and they sat together in the parlor and had tea and crumpets before the fire.