Sunday 1st May 2005 Nakło Zachód.

Holiday. Canal closed. Woken at 1.30 a.m. by a loud scrabbling noise, which seemed to be underwater? When Mike went outside to investigate he found a cat frantically trying to get out of the water between the two boats. He came back inside and found his motorcycling gloves, just in case it was a feral cat and not used to being handled by people. I got up when he brought it inside. It was icy cold, drenched and filthy. We rubbed it dry using two towels 

Rubbish photo from minicam

out of the dirty washing bag and it was still trying to curl up into a frozen dithering ball - but purring. After half an hour of rubbing it to dry its fur and warm it up, I stopped and made us some hot chocolate, then we went back to bed leaving it still shivering, wrapped in a towel on the settee. It was still there when Mike got up. I was quite surprised it hadn’t died in the night. Mike gave it a bit of corned beef which it tried to eat, but just sat there, not moving. Not surprising really if it was only used to eating live mice and had probably never seen a saucer of milk before. Mike said it was drooling, when I looked it had still got the piece of corned beef in its mouth. I risked getting my finger bitten and prised it out from between its teeth. It livened up a bit then. Mike got ready to go on a voyage of exploration on the fizzer - to look at moorings and shops in Nakło and moorings in Bydgoszcz. He opened the side doors and I picked the cat up to put it out on the bank. It suddenly

Bydgoszcz town from the river.

showed great interest in getting out, using my hand as a launch pad and leaving me with a great scratch across my thumb from its back feet claws. Thanks cat! It went half way up the bank, stopped, turned and stared, then ran off in the direction of the little house alongside the lock. Perishing farm cat! It had been 7.5º C overnight. The day was sunny and warm until lunchtime, when it started raining, we had a few heavy showers and then the sunshine returned. I did the chores while Mike was away on the moped. Plus I cooked some buns for lunch and made some gooey chocolate brownies while the oven was hot. Around lunchtime the rain started pouring down. Mike sent a text from the river bridge in Bydgoszcz at 2.10 p.m. He said the Wisła was not flowing as fast as the Oder had been and it had just started to rain. He was back at 3.30 p.m. just as Bill started Rosy’s engine to do some battery recharging for an hour or so. I made him some soup for his lunch. He said all the shops were open and not because it was a holiday, it looks like Polish shops open Sundays anyway.