Welcome back to Muse on Monday! From now on, I will show the new prompt first and then a few stories from the previous week’s prompt.

As always, you can email me your story at greenwalledtreehouse@gmail.com and if I can, I will post it next Monday. Tell me your name and what country you are from in the email.

If you have your own ideas for a prompt, send me that too! Just think: kids from all over the world could be writing stories based on your ideas.

Story Prompt: March 15, 2021

Last week’s prompt was:

• Setting: in a boat
• Characters: a very tall man
• Conflict: any
• Other elements: a kitten, ice

Below is a story I wrote based on that prompt.

Sea Kitty

March 8, 2021 Muse on Monday

Getting exercise was hard. Everything smelled like fish and felt like sunburn.

“This is all your fault,” Basil said to the kitten. The kitten may have meowed in reply, but its head was buried in a tuna ten times bigger than it was, so Basil could not hear.

This terrible situation of fish-smelling and sunburn-feeling started because Basil liked computers. He liked them so much he could sit in front of a computer all day, just getting up to eat and go to the bathroom. Often he did.

His doctor thought this was a problem. He told Basil that if he did not start exercising, he would be dead before he was 50. Basil really wanted to see the new computers that would be out then, so he decided he should start being healthy.

The doctor suggested he get a dog. Then he would have to walk it every day.

“I’m allergic to dogs,” Basil said. “Can I get a cat?”

“But you don’t have to walk a cat,” the doctor said. “It defeats the point.”

So Basil went online and found a new kind of cat called a sea kitty that not only liked water, but needed water. The website suggested you take your sea kitty swimming twice a week.  Basil ordered one.

The sea kitty came a week later in a special box with holes in it. He made a bed for it in the laundry room, but would wake up in the morning to find it in the bathtub, floating asleep like a sea lion. He couldn’t figure out how it turned on the water. Basil could not think of a name, so he kept calling it Sea Kitty. Finally he decided that would be the kitten’s name, although he spelled it Seekeh D, just to be different.

The first weekend, Basil rented a rowboat for them to go out on the ocean. The problem was that Basil was a very tall man. He was almost 6’11” (210 cm) and always had a sore neck from bending down. He rented the biggest boat he could afford but when he got in, there was no room for his legs. He was only comfortable when his feet hung over the sides.

Basil rowed out of the harbor and into the open ocean. Seekeh D stood at the front making happy yipping sounds. Then she jumped into the water and swam around until she got tired and Basil pulled her in. Basil was getting very tired too. This exercise thing was not easy.

Suddenly Basil felt something nibbling at his toes. He thought of sharks and gave a yell and pulled his foot in. Unfortunately, the fish hung on to his foot and he pulled it into the boat. It was a huge tuna. Seekeh D immediately grabbed it and started chewing on a fin.

Basil hated seafood so he just watched Seekeh D fight with the tuna until the fish gave up the fight. Basil suddenly realized he had forgotten sunscreen.

Now everything smelled like fish and felt like sunburn. And sore muscles. Basil looked back at the shore and tried to imagine rowing back there. He had to start soon or it might be dark before he tried.

A motorboat came by. “Hey! Are you okay?” the captain asked.

Basil sighed. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just taking my sea kitty out for a boat ride. I’m trying to get exercise. No one said it would be easy to have a cat.”

“Can I at least give you anything?” the boat captain asked. “Just one thing,” Basil said. “Do you have any ice? This fish is starting to smell terrible.”

Good luck and happy writing! Come back next Monday for another story prompt.