A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
The cat took my USB stick at 6:52 p.m., in front of forty witnesses and a pot of crawfish.
Steam rolled off the boil on the dock, and the houseboat smelled of cayenne, sunscreen and bayou mud. The low sun turned the water to brass. And on my open backpack, the little dome one printed with a violet sky and orange tabbies drifting among ringed planets, sat a smoke-gray cat with a white star on her chest, my stick swinging from her teeth by its red pompom keychain.
Everything I was playing tonight lived on that stick. Four hours of swampy bass and seventies funk. No laptop. No backup, because I am a woman who trusts her own pockets.
"LAGNIAPPE!" Claudette, the houseboat's owner, came at her with a crawfish strainer. "Drop it!"
The name went through me like a kick drum. Lagniappe.
The cat looked at me with blue-white eyes, a color no cat should have, and stepped off the rail.
Not into the water. Onto a floating log, then a cypress knee, then a stump, a dotted line across the bayou. The red pompom bobbed once in the shadow of the trees.
Gone.
✦
"She goes to Miss Eulalie's," Claudette said. "Two miles in. Always does when weather's coming."
To the southwest, clouds were stacking into a blue-black wall. "Squall's here around nine," she said. "You're on at nine-thirty."
"Can that cat swim?"
"Baby, I have never once seen that cat wet."
At the end of the dock a man was untying a pirogue, narrow and flat-bottomed, honey-colored plywood under clear glass. He wore cutoffs over leggings printed with cats: orange kittens on the backs of his thighs, ringed planets circling his ankles.
"Remy built that boat," Claudette said. "Remy. Take the DJ."
"That's a boat?" I said. "That's a butter knife."
He tossed me a life vest and buckled his. "Sit low. Center. Nose over your belly button. Don't grab the sides."
I looked at his legs.
"Mosquito armor," he said. "And she picked them. Slept on them in my truck for a week."
✦
A pirogue rides so low the bayou is right at your wrist, warm as bathwater, the color of strong tea. Remy stood in the stern and moved us with a push pole in long, silent strokes.
He read the swamp the way I read a crowd. "Egrets heading to roost. Forty minutes of light." "Hyacinth's filled that cut since March. We go around."
Wild irises bloomed purple along the banks. A tiny gold bird flashed across our bow. "Swamp canary," he said. "Prothonotary warbler, just back from down south."
Then: a red pompom on a stump forty yards ahead, and the cat beside it, washing one paw.
"Lagniappe," Remy called, soft. "Come on, now."
She picked up the stick and walked away across water with nothing in it to stand on.
"How," I said.
"Ask Miss Eulalie. That cat showed up on her porch the spring something bright came down in the swamp. Folks went looking. Never found what." He pushed off. "Or where she came from."
Thunder rolled down the bayou, slow and enormous.
"Eulalie's is closer than the dock now," Remy said. "We go forward."
✦
Dark came green, and then it came black.
Remy's headlamp caught two coals floating low on the water to our left. Red. Steady.
"Little one," he said. "Four foot. She's minding her business; we'll mind ours." He eased us right without breaking rhythm, and the coals sank away.
My phone said NO SERVICE. Bullfrogs thrummed like bass strings, tree frogs ticked like hi-hats, and every channel looked like every other channel. Remy stopped poling. The headlamp swept trunk, trunk, trunk, moss.
"Okay," he said, which is a word that means a lot of things in the dark.
The wind arrived, cool and smelling of rain on hot tin. Then a soft thump at the bow.
The cat sat on the bow. Dry. Composed. The red pompom curled at her feet.
Neither of us had seen her board.
She was looking up through a gap in the canopy at one patch of stars the storm hadn't reached. Then she stared down a cut I'd have sworn was solid trees.
Remy laughed once, low, and turned the boat to follow her gaze.
Forty strokes later: a porch light.
✦
Miss Eulalie's camp stood on cypress pilings: tin roof, screen porch, zydeco murmuring from a radio. She was maybe eighty, small and upright, in a green snapback with a flower of geometry on the front and wings fanning out from it.
"Mais, look what the cat dragged in," she said, and held the door.
The squall hit as it slapped shut. Rain roared on the tin like applause that wouldn't quit. Remy's palm settled warm between my shoulder blades. Lightning lit the swamp white, and in the flash I saw her wall: a sunburst bass with a cracked finish and, framed beside it, a 45.
Les Étoiles. "Lagniappe (Part 2)."
I knew that label like my own handwriting. A dollar crate in a West Philly basement when I was sixteen. A bassline so warm and patient it rearranged my life. I'd closed every set with it for nine years. The label credited the band and nobody else.
"Who's on bass?" It came out small.
She tapped her chest. "Lafayette, nineteen seventy-four. One take. Our drummer had a shift at the plant. How you know that record? We pressed three hundred."
So I told her. Basement parties in Philly. A rooftop in Atlanta at sunrise. Every room I'd ever closed.
Her hand went to her knee, and her fingers began to walk the line, note for note, while the rain came down.
"Nobody ever told me," she said, "it went anywhere."
I had to sit down on the arm of her chair. Lagniappe climbed into her lap and laid her chin on that moving hand, as if she'd waited a long time to hear this part.
Remy's phone found one bar. Claudette: Sound's off for lightning. Your slot moves to whenever the sky says.
✦
The storm grumbled off by eleven. Miss Eulalie walked us down with a spotlight, gave Remy the way home past the osprey nest, then folded the stick into my palm with her calloused fingers.
After the rain the bayou was glass, stars lying in it all around us, so the pirogue seemed to drift through sky. The cat rode the bow like a navigator. Remy's knee touched my back on every stroke, and neither of us moved.
At midnight the generator coughed back to life, and I played. Halftime bass under funk breaks, sixty people on a deck that flexed under their feet, Claudette dancing with the strainer over her head. At 1:40 I dropped the last track. Miss Eulalie's bassline rolled out of the speakers and across the water into the dark.
"Low end carries over water at night," Remy said into my ear.
Two miles off, through the cypresses, a porch light blinked. Off. On. Off. On.
✦
At three we sat on the houseboat roof. Star jasmine on the railing, lightning flickering far out over the Gulf without a sound. His shoulder was warm against mine.
"Nettie." He turned to face me. "I've wanted to kiss you since you called my boat a butter knife. That something you want?"
"Yes," I said. "Twice, so the cat hears. Yes."
His mouth was warm, all cayenne. My hand found the back of his neck, the heat of him under damp cotton, and at the far end of the roof a small gray shape turned her back on us to keep watch on the sky.
✦
My flight was at noon. At sunrise I went to pack.
Lagniappe was asleep inside my backpack, curled on top of the stick among the printed cats and planets, one paw over her nose.
Remy, rinsing the pirogue in his cat leggings, laughed. Claudette leaned out the cabin door. "Well. She's decided."
"Decided what?"
"She only steals from people she means to bring back," Remy said.
I looked at the bag: violet sky, orange tabbies, ringed planets, and one real gray cat breathing slow among them. Then I sat down on the dock with it warm and purring against my hip, and asked Remy how long it takes to build a pirogue for two.
The backpack, the leggings and the cap from the bayou
Our Space Cats design is a storybook cosmos: cats drifting among planets, moons and nebulae in violet and deep blue. The bag Lagniappe raided and then claimed is the Cosmic Space Cats backpack ($70), a little dome-top rave backpack with orange tabbies and glowing blue cats circling ringed planets. Remy's mosquito armor is the Cosmic Space Cats men's festival leggings ($65), tabby kittens and glowing blue cats tumbling down violet and indigo legs to planets orbiting the ankles, a mens rave outfit with a sense of humor under cutoffs or shorts. And Miss Eulalie's cap is the Angel Catcher Light Green snapback ($40): a Flower of Life at the center of a cypress-green crown, wing shapes fanning out from it, a black brim traced with fine geometry.
- Backpack: the all-over Space Cats print, dye-sublimated so the colors won't fade or crack · black straps and top handle · zippered front pocket.
- Leggings: men's festival leggings with the all-over Space Cats print, dye-sublimated so the colors won't fade or crack · sizes XS–3XL.
- Snapback: the Angel Catcher art across the green crown · black patterned brim · adjustable snap closure.
Everything is made to order (7–11 business days of production), and US orders of $70 or more ship free. Pack for the next dock party: backpacks · festival leggings · snapback hats
What do you wear to a boat party in Louisiana?
For a boat party in Louisiana, dress for humid heat, sudden showers and mosquitoes at dusk: a breathable tank or tee, light leggings or long shorts, non-slip shoes for wet decks, a cap for the sun, and a small zippered backpack for your phone, sunscreen and bug spray. Spring nights stay warm, so skip heavy layers.
- Dusk is bug hour: light, covering layers like festival leggings under shorts protect your legs on the dock and in the cypress shade, with repellent on any skin left bare.
- Decks get slick: rain, river spray and dancing feet make boards wet, so wear grippy sneakers or sandals with straps, and bring a life vest for any small boat.
- Storm season: spring squall lines move fast across the Gulf Coast. Know where the shelter is, and expect the host to cut the sound for lightning.
- Swamp funk and swampy bass: expect brass, funk breaks, zydeco and halftime bass. Bold color and all-over prints fit right in, and a rave backpack with a zippered pocket keeps a DJ's USB away from curious paws.
For a festival with the same moss-hung, humid, waterside feel, Suwannee Hulaween fills the live oaks and Spanish moss along the Suwannee River in Live Oak, Florida, each weekend before Halloween, with humid nights of 55–65°F and fog off the river at dawn, while Electric Forest in Rothbury, Michigan, brings humid late-June nights in the 55–65°F range and frequent thunderstorms.
Frequently asked questions
What is a pirogue?
A pirogue is a small, flat-bottomed boat from the bayous and swamps of Louisiana. Early pirogues were dug out of a single cypress log; today most are built from plywood, fiberglass or aluminum. Because it floats in very shallow water, people paddle or pole it through narrow channels. Sit low and centered, because it tips easily.
How do you keep mosquitoes away at an outdoor festival?
Cover up at dusk and dawn, when many mosquitoes bite most, with light long sleeves and leggings or long pants. Use a repellent the CDC recommends, such as DEET, picaridin or oil of lemon eucalyptus, and follow the label. Camp away from standing water, and sit near a fan or breeze, since mosquitoes are weak fliers.
Can a DJ play a whole set from a USB stick?
Yes. Most club and festival booths use Pioneer DJ CDJ or XDJ players that read USB drives prepared in rekordbox, so an entire set can live on one stick. Ask the venue which players and formats it uses, export your playlists before you travel, and always carry a second USB drive as a backup.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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