Right after his 11th birthday in 1954, Michael is left alone to board the Oronsay, a ship that will take him on a three week journey to a school in England, where a mother he can barely recall is supposed to meet him at Tilbury. Assigned to Table 76, the furthest from the Captain's Table and known as "The Cat's Table", Michael is wary of the others, especially of the two other boys also on their way to schools in England.

While it might be the least of all the tables on the ship, Michael starts to enjoy the companionship of his many unusual tablemates. Within a very short time, the tough looking Cassius, Michael (aka Myrah), and a more philosophical Ramadhin with his frail heart quickly become fast friends and they all spend their days from early morning to late at night in mischievous, dangerous fun creating havoc on board. Slipping in and around almost invisibly to the staff and customers on the ship, they snoop and steal, catching random adult conversations around them while making up their own minds over what is happening as they dine on pilfered food from the first class area in their lifeboat hideaway.

Like most children, the boys accept the people they meet on the ship at face value and readily accept those as friends whose activities or conversations are of interest to them, such as a special trip to the engine room or intrigued by why Miss Lasqueti, a lady with a special jacket with holders for the pigeons she was taking back to England, has a pistol in her purse. After years of boarding schools, the boys are been adept at lying to interfering adults and have been primed to withhold small, yet pertinent, truths from those in authority. How are they to know the ever rippling damage that can happen from their misplaced devotion and loyalty?

Well known Booker prize winning author, Michael Ondaatje, has created an extraordinary, yet highly realistic cast of characters in THE CAT'S TABLE and presents their stories in a loosely woven, almost vignette fashion, that interweaves their relationships from the past into the future, from eastern to western influences, from the perspective of the young to adult knowing in a highly readable and totally engaging novel.

Narrated primarily from the perspective of 11 year Michael, the story of his journey by ship from Colombo to Tilbury, England via the Suez Canal begins benignly, then subtly shifts into more shocking and alarming events that "can take a lifetime to reveal their damage and influence".

Book Summary

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table”—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator’s elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself “with a distant eye” for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat’s Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.
 
As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy’s adult years, it tells a spellbinding story—by turns poignant and electrifying—about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.