One of the first things you learn as a fisherman is to expect the unexpected. On a hot day in July, fishermen learned this lesson firsthand when a routine fishing excursion quickly took a shocking turn. What they reeled in from the waves wasn’t an abnormally-large catch or rare sea creature. In fact, they had no idea how the poor little guy got into the water in the first place…
When the crew of Still Flyin Charters in Orange Beach, Alabama, set out on a routine excursion out of Perdido Pass, they were expecting it to be a normal day…or as normal as it gets while fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. They’d seen some once-in-a-lifetime sights there before.
Photo by Cheryl Gerber/Getty Images
When you’re fishing in the Gulf, you come across all kinds of marine life you probably wouldn’t see on an average beach day: dolphins, snapper fish, even some whales and manatees. It’s not just a place of weird sights, but of weird sounds, too.
Maasai Sightings/YouTube
Fishermen like those with Still Flyin Charters are used to the sound of the waves hitting the side of the boat, the wind whistling through their ears, and a fishing line getting pulled by something hungry beneath the waves. But on that day in July 2020, something was different.
Cruising World
Since they ran a charter boat, the sounds of people oohing and aahing over their catches is all part of a normal day. A fisherman gets used to the ordinary sounds of a fishing excursion, so when a foreign sound reached their ears, they immediately knew something was wrong.
Still Flyin Charters
Steve Crews, the captain and owner of Still Flyin Charters, quickly looked over the side of the boat at the waves below. The guests on the boat heard the sound, too: a soft wailing noise, like someone or something struggling in the water.
National Park Service
The wailing noise was coming from a tiny, furry creature struggling against the waves. Without skipping a beat, Crews and his fellow fishermen grabbed their nets and started to do what they do best: fish. But what they pulled out of the water didn’t have gills.
It had a skinny body, two floppy ears, and its eyes screwed up tightly against the current. “He was struggling to stay up,” Still Flyin Charters explained of the creature on their Facebook page. It wasn’t until they finally pulled the little guy out of the waves that they recognized it.
It was a tiny orange kitten. “Our catch of the day,” Still Flyin Charters wrote on Facebook. Looking at the poor kitten, it was clear that he had been through quite the ordeal. Just because he was finally safe on the boat didn’t mean he was going to survive…
And looking at this photo, the poor guy definitely looked worse for wear when he was rescued! Thankfully, the crew knew exactly what to do. “We caught him, brought him in the boat, and let him recover.” Still, everyone had plenty of questions.
Still Flyin Charters
When Still Flyin Charters posted the story onto their Facebook page, they were bombarded with questions: How did this happen? Did the cat fall in from another boat? Was the cat being used as shark bait? Or was it something even more sinister?
“No one uses kittens for shark bait,” Still Flyin Charters was quick to point out. “I used to commercial shark fish for a living. Never heard of anyone doing that.” Many people were alarmed by the possibility that the cat didn’t end up in the water by accident.
”I want to assume it was an accident, but there are a lot of mean people when it comes to animals, so you just don’t know,” one person commented on Facebook. As the fishing experts, Still Flyin Charters have their own theory about how it happened.
They think he was simply “sucked out by the tide.” Curiosity has been known to kill the cat in the past, after all! At least the little guy was scooped up before any real damage was done…that the crew knows of, that is. Now, the kitten is still fighting to recover.
According to Still Flyin Charters, the cat is still a little jumpy from the whole experience. “He’s hanging around the house because he’s terrified inside,” the Charter company wrote on Facebook. They had doubts that he would ever be able to coexist with people…
Still Flyin Charters
That is, until he was adopted! As it turns out, the feral cat just needed some time and love in order to recover and find a forever home. Still, this story wasn’t over yet. A few days later, Still Flyin Charters got a letter in the mail.
Still Flyin Charters
The letter was from PETA, and they had some choice words for Still Flyin Charters. They thanked the crew for saving the cat and for being “kind citizens” before reminding the fishermen that “fish are living beings capable of feeling pain…just as cats are.”
Still Flyin Charters didn’t let the criticism about their occupation get them down. What wasn’t controversial about the whole story was how they were able to save a cat from drowning, after all. Of course, the seriousness of the story didn’t stop people from making jokes.
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“That’s the strangest looking catfish I have ever seen,” someone commented on Facebook about the waterlogged cat. The cat probably is one of Still Flyin Charters’ weirdest catches! “Can’t say you see that every day,” they admitted on Facebook.
Still Flyin Charters
While we wait for the next cat update, people have offered up their name ideas for the little seafarer: “Nemo,” “Shark Bait”, “Jonah”, and “Gilligan” are popular choices, among others. Can you guess one of the most popular names suggested?
Still Flyin Charters
“Lucky” — maybe the most fitting name of all! It was definitely a rare stroke of luck that Still Flyin Charters happened to find the little kitten when they did.