I tried to read Corto Maltese in high school and I didn’t get it at all. Fortunately I retried a couple of years ago and realized how great character he is! I guess it’s some sort of growing up thing, as with Citizen Cane, you need to be somehow mature to understand The Point. Though, I was also quite jealous to Hugo Pratt for mastering the genre so well that my own scribblings started to seem embarrasing… But in the end the stories were so good that I couldn’t hold crudge for very long. Good for me 🙂
The cat is there because of one of my ultimate favourite Corto moments, where he tells stories to Venetian stray cats :3

Corto Maltese by Hugo Pratt